Onboarding a new technician: an onboarding plan for the first month, week by week

Why onboarding a technician often goes wrong

A technician you hire usually knows the trade, but not your customers, your equipment or your work order. Without an onboarding plan, they learn these by chance, from whoever happens to be next to them that day. Where it goes wrong:

• Nothing is ready on day one. No account, no tools in their name, safety shoes in the wrong size.
• Riding along without a goal. They ride along for a week, but nobody has said what they should be able to do afterwards.
• Alone too soon. On day three, they face a breakdown alone, on a unit they have never seen.
• The mentor has no time. The mentor’s schedule stays as full as ever.
• Nobody checks. After a month, nobody knows which work they can already handle alone.

That costs return visits, reports the office has to complete and an experienced colleague who is still answering questions in the evening.

What is an onboarding plan?

An onboarding plan is a schedule for the first weeks of a new employee: what they learn and when, from whom, and how you check that they can do it. For a technician, it comes down to three things: working safely, your company’s way of working from assignment to report, and the units they may handle on their own. A good onboarding plan fits on one page, and the new colleague gets it on their first day.

What the law requires when welcoming a new employee

In Belgium, the Code on Well-being at Work (Codex over het welzijn op het werk / Code du bien-être au travail), book I, title 2, requires the employer, among other things, to do the following when welcoming a new employee (onthaal / accueil):

• The employer organises the welcome of every employee, possibly through a member of the line management, and appoints an experienced employee to accompany the new employee. The employer may also provide that guidance personally (Article I.2-15).
• Whoever organises the welcome signs a document showing that the necessary information and instructions on well-being at work have been given (Article I.2-11, 9°, and Article I.2-15).
• On recruitment, the employee receives sufficient and appropriate training on well-being at work, focused on their workstation or job, during working hours and not at their own expense (Article I.2-21).

The text is in book I, title 2 of the Code (in Dutch), on the website of the FPS Employment. How you organise that welcome, which instructions and certificates your work requires, and where you keep the signed document are things to discuss with your prevention adviser or your external service for prevention and protection at work. For the contract and payroll, your social secretariat (payroll provider) is the point of contact.

Before day one: what must be ready

1. Account and app. An account in their name, with the role that fits their job, and the app on their mobile phone, installed and tested.
2. Van. Fitted out and counted, with the list of what it should contain as standard.
3. Tools, measuring instruments and personal protective equipment. In their name, checked, and in their size.
4. Documents. The safety rules, the emergency numbers, who to call when in doubt, and the work instructions for the units they will do first (see writing a work instruction).
5. A mentor. An experienced technician who guides them, with fewer interventions in their own schedule during those first weeks.

Week 1: riding along, safety and the company’s way of working

Day one is for the welcome: who is who in the office and the warehouse, the house rules, the safety rules and what to do in case of an accident, a fire or an evacuation. Then the welcome document is signed.

For the rest of the week, the new technician rides along with their mentor. Agree in advance what they must be able to do by Friday:

• carry out the risk analysis before the work themselves, with an LMRA (last-minute risk analysis) before the intervention;
• follow an intervention in the app, from departure to closing;
• record parts, photos and hours the way your company asks;
• write a report that the office no longer needs to complete.

From the second or third day, let them do the work themselves, with the mentor alongside to correct them. End the week with a short conversation about what went well and what did not.

Weeks 2 to 4: the first assignments alone

Start with simple, repeatable work on units they have already seen, such as an annual maintenance visit. Plan more time than for an experienced colleague: a full day puts a new technician under pressure to skip steps.

• The mentor stays reachable, and risky assignments are still done together.
• Read their reports, every day in the first weeks, and give feedback the same day.
• Build up: first maintenance, then breakdowns on familiar units, then new types.
• Schedule the training they still need, for example at a manufacturer.

At the end of the month comes a real conversation. Do they work safely without anyone asking? Are their reports complete? Which work do they already do alone, and what do they still need? Write down what they may do alone from now on: the planner needs that list just as much as the technician does. Keep it in a skills matrix.

An onboarding plan as a template

Copy this table and adapt it to your work:

An experienced tradesperson goes through the steps faster, a school leaver more slowly. Every step keeps an owner and a criterion.

An example: a new technician in an HVAC company

A company that installs and maintains heat pumps and air conditioning hires a technician with experience in electrics, but little in refrigeration. His account and van are ready on the Friday before, and his mentor, an experienced colleague, gets fewer visits in the first weeks.

From the Wednesday of week one, he does the LMRA himself and writes the report, which she reads before the customer signs. In week two he goes out alone on maintenance, with more time per visit. In the first month, he only works on repairs to the refrigerant circuit together with her. After four weeks they agree: from now on he does maintenance alone, and for breakdowns on heat pumps he first takes a training course at the manufacturer. The planner gets that agreement in writing.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

Before day one

• The account: in the role management, the administrator invites the new employee with their name, email address and one or more roles. They receive an email with a link to choose their password, which works once and expires.
• The technician record: if their roles make them a user of the technician app, a window asks you to link them to a technician record. Without that link, the app refuses the login. If your organisation uses time tracking, they also need an employee record to submit their hours.
• Completing the record: on their technician record, in the staff and hours screen, the administrator or the manager sets their skills, regions, work schedule and van.
• The van: in the app, they see the stock of their van and request parts. The minimums are set by the office; without a minimum, the app does not flag shortages.
• The app: the technician app opens in the browser of their mobile phone, without an app store. Add it to the home screen with them and open it once with a connection: after that it also works offline.

During onboarding

• Instructions: what the office notes on an intervention, they read in the app, in the overview of their assignment.
• Safety: the LMRA, the protective equipment, the checklists and the documents to read are set up by the administrator or the manager in the safety configuration. In the safety tab of the intervention, the technician confirms that they have read and understood a document, and the server refuses the start of work as long as a blocking condition has not been met.
• Training: the office can assign a training course to them as a task. They see it in their tasks and in their calendar; the office sees its status on their technician record.
• Reviewing: once the work is finished, the office sees the result, the report and the hours on the intervention record.

Good to know: the app shows each technician only their own interventions, so while riding along, the new colleague does not see their mentor’s interventions in their own app. The app appears in the language of their account: Dutch, French or English. An onboarding plan or a welcome document per employee is not part of Service Suite: you keep track of that yourself.

Which role fits which job is explained in user roles and permissions. How to keep the van stocked is covered in van stock for technicians.

Frequently asked questions

What goes into an onboarding plan for a technician?

What must be ready before the first day (account, app, van, tools, protective equipment), the welcome on day one, riding along in week one and the first assignments alone in the weeks after that. Every step has an owner and a criterion, and the month ends with a conversation about what the technician may do alone from now on.

Does an employer in Belgium have to welcome a new employee?

Yes. The Code on Well-being at Work requires the employer to organise the welcome of every employee and to appoint an experienced employee to accompany them (Article I.2-15). Whoever organises the welcome signs a document showing that the necessary information and instructions on well-being at work have been given. How you organise that is something to discuss with your prevention adviser.

How long does it take to onboard a technician?

There is no fixed duration: it depends on their experience and on the installations you maintain. A plan for the first month, with a conversation at the end, gives a framework; for complex installations, the learning continues after that.

Does Service Suite have an onboarding plan or a welcome module?

No. You keep an onboarding plan or a welcome document per employee yourself. Service Suite does help with the preparation, with an account and its roles, a technician record with van and work schedule, and safety documents that the technician confirms in the app.