New Staff Induction

Welcome to Initio Learning Trust

This induction site is for new joiners across all schools within our Trust and for our central team. It provides information which all staff need to be familiar with.

As a Trust, all of our policies and processes are shared across all settings. This site will guide you through these and provide links to general training which needs to be completed for all roles.

Within your local setting, you will also receive an induction specific to your site and to your own role. Once you have completed all the recommended training, and read through this site, please complete the induction checklist at the bottom of the site.

"Welcome to Inito Learning Trust. We are proud to be a forward-looking trust that provides supportive, creative and innovative learning opportunities, nurturing everyone as an individual. We look forward to working with you in our schools or as a member of our central team."

Liz West, Chief Executive Officer.

Meet the team

The Trust’s Executive team delivers the strategy of the Board of Trustees and provides leadership and shared support to the schools in the Trust, under the direction of CEO, Liz West.

Trust strategy

The Trust a strategic plan which reflects which runs from September 2023 until July 2026. The full document is available below.

Initio Strategic Plan 23-26 Final.pdf

Probationary period

Staff who have newly joined the trust will be subject to a probationary period.

(Please note all newly qualified teachers are supported through the Early Career Framework, and this will be picked up separately)

In your probationary period, you will meet regularly with your line manager to evaluate how you are progressing in your role. This is an important process which ensures that you are fully clear about, and fully supported in your new role.

If your review meetings have not been scheduled in (2 weeks, 6 weeks and at 6 months as a minimum), please speak with your line manager to ensure that these are put in the diary.

Your probationary support runs alongside your induction into the trust and your local work area. If you are unclear at anytime regarding what the expectations are in relation to your new position, please speak in the first instance with your line manager. If you are still concerned, please talk to your HR/Office Manager.

Trustwide policies

All schools follow the same set of Trustwide policies.

And as a new starter, you need to have an understanding of our expectations regarding conduct and behaviour, safeguarding, reporting absence and the responsible use of ICT.

We also recommend that you are clear about health and safety obligations (both your own and the Trust's), also pay and expenses.

All policies can be accessed by clicking the link below or on the Intranet. You should review the full suite of policies as part of your induction so you know what is available. If you wish to explore these further, we recommend starting with the list to the right.

Trust Policies

Safeguarding & Child Protection
Code of conduct
Sickness Absence
ICT Responsible Use
Health and Safety
Pay
Expenses
Equality & Diversity
Probation
Appraisal
Whistleblowing

Safeguarding

You will receive a safeguarding briefing in person from the School's Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). This may not happen in your first week, so please complete the introductory training below:

Complete this online training session, at the end of the training there is a knowledge checker and feedback form which you will need to complete, confirmation will be sent to your school DSL (this will take approx 1 hour).
Complete the Prevent e-Learning - Course 1, Awareness (this will take approx 45 minutes). Please send a copy of the certificate to your HR/Office Manager.
Read Part 1 of Keeping Children Safe in Education

You will be expected to undertake additional safeguarding training as relevant to your role.

Cyber security

Understanding the risks and threats of a Cyber attack in schools is something all Trust staff need to have awareness of, so please complete the self learn video in this link . This is a condition of our insurance due to the increased risk of cyber terrorism in the education environment. Please complete within your first two weeks of employment.

HR and payroll

The HR/ Office Manager for your setting is available to help with general HR queries such as employee benefits, access to training, contract and payroll related issues. They are a good first point of contact while you are settling in to your new role and getting to know your line manager and new team.

Trust staff are paid on the last working day of each month. Payslips are sent to you electronically by our payroll provider, Dorset Council. Please notify your HR/Office Manager straight away if you don't receive your payslip.

As soon as you receive your P45, please provide Parts 2 and 3 to your HR/Office Manager, otherwise you may be placed on an emergency tax code.

New Joiner Information

You will have been asked to complete several forms to ensure we can pay you and that we have all the relevant information we need. These will already have been sent to you (either through our onboarding portal or via a link in your offer letter). Please double check that your HR/ Office Manager has everything they need from you.

Self reporting changes to your personal information

It is expected that you have given all the correct details in your application concerning your name, address, age, job history, qualifications, etc. This is extremely important and should the Trust discover that you have given any false information, your employment could be terminated.

It is therefore very important that you inform your HR/Office Manager of any changes to personal circumstances, such as:

Address or telephone number
Personal email address
Details of emergency contacts
Bank or building society information
Criminal convictions or cautions

Overtime, Travel and Expenses

These can all be entered on the TTE portal provided by Dorset Council, our payroll provider. You can also register on this link. We recommend doing this as part of your induction process, and saving your password in Google Chrome.

All overtime must be agreed in advance with your line manager
If you are making travel claims you will need to provide details of your car.
On occasion, you may not be able to follow Trust purchasing policy and may incur cash expenses. If this does occur, please ensure that your HR/Office Manager is given a scan of your receipt for audit purposes.

Sickness Absence

If you are unwell, it is very important to notify your school following the local procedure. As part of your local induction, make sure you know the exact mechanism .

When you return to work, you will need to complete a Sickness Absence Form (SAF) . Your line manager will check-in with you at this point and hold a return to work interview.

Electronic Sickness Absence Forms will be shared with you by your line manager or HR/Office Manager, or a paper copy will be provided.

If you are unwell for more than 7 calendar days you must supply a medical certificate (sick note) to cover the sickness period from Day 8 onwards. Please send this to your line manager and your HR/Office Manager, and inform them when you expect to return to work.

Please refer to the Trust Sickness Absence Policy for further guidance (see policy link above).

Health and safety

There are a number of H&S training modules which you will be expected to undertake. The core list is provided below. There may be additional modules specific to your individual role.

These are completed on our Judicium training platform, and you will be enrolled onto this and sent links to complete the relevant courses by your HR/Office Manager or Site Manager.

These modules are mandatory within the first month:

Health & Safety Basics
Stress Management
Fire Safety Awareness
Working at Height
Manual Handling
Control of Infections
Accident reporting
Display Screen Equipment (for office based staff)

Health & Safety Training

Driving at Work?

Staff are covered for occasional business use of their vehicle under the Trust's umbrella insurance policy.

Members of staff regularly who use their own car in connection with work must have business use cover. Business use cover should be part of the drivers personal insurance policy.

For anyone driving for work purpose (other than commuting to work), the Annual Driving Risk Assessment needs to be completed. Please speak with your line manager to complete this if needed.

GDPR

Everyone responsible for processing personal data must adhere to the principles of data protection in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

The Trust has an internal Data Protection Officer (DPO) who can be contacted at any time for all issues or queries relating to data protection and information requests. Contact details are available on the trust website.

Specific data protection training is provided by Judicium. You will be given a log in by your HR/Office Manager and these modules are mandatory within the first month.

GDPR Training

Compulsory for all staff

Introduction to GDPR & Data Protection

Compulsory for SLT and Office Managers

Introduction to SAR and FOI requests
Freedom of Information Requests (FOI)

Compulsory for SLT, office staff, teachers, teaching assistants and pastoral staff

What is a Breach?
Breach Notification

Employee benefits and wellbeing

The Trust is committed to support employee wellbeing.

As part of this commitment, we offer a Health cash plan free to all employees, and access to a Cycle to Work scheme , which is a tax efficient way to spread the cost of purchasing a bike through deductions from your monthly pay.

Please follow the link to the Trust's Wellbeing Intranet for details of what is available to you, and for further information on how the Trust is able to support your wellbeing whilst working for us.

Healthcare Cashplan

The Trust pays the membership fees for all staff who are enrolled. The benefits are provided by our chosen partner; UK Healthcare

In common with many employee benefits, this is classed as a benefit in kind for tax purposes, and you will see a small adjustment to your tax code which will be listed as ‘private medical insurance’ on your annual P11D return. The figure you see on your P11D is what we, the Trust, have paid to provide this benefit to you during the year. As this reduces your tax code by that amount, you then pay tax on this amount. To give you an idea of the impact, for normal rate tax payers this would result in a cost to you in increased tax of just over £1.20 a month.

If you are new to the Trust, you need to OPT IN to our cashplan (see below).

Enrolment into the Healthcare cashplan

PLEASE NOTE - This is only available to Employees of the trust. It you work for the trust on a casual or supply basis , you are not entitled to access this benefit.

If you are new to the Trust, you need to OPT IN to our cashplan. You do this when you complete the induction checklist at the bottom of this site.

To help make this decision, please have a look at the enormous range of benefits you can claim cash back on, and the discounts which UK Healthcare can offer. This information can be found on our Health cashplan pages.

Employee engagement

As a Trust, we recognise that our greatest asset is you, our staff.

And we want to hear from you!

There are a number of ways you can contact us - on an Ad Hoc basis, you can contact 'HR@initiolearning.org' to send suggestions and feedback, but our most important mechanism is our our annual survey.

Our survey takes place at the end of the Easter term, or start of the summer term, and we have now been running this for 5 years.

This helps our schools identify action areas which are specific to them, and also ensures that the Trust is listening to everyone; working collaboratively on action areas, and feeding this back into our strategy.

The results and action plans for this are available on the Trust's Wellbeing Intranet site.

To the right are some examples of changes which were a direct result of the feedback we receive from these surveys.

You asked, we did

Introduction of the No Marking Policy - you've since told us

"Since the move was made to a 'no marking' policy, marking has drastically reduced, and assessment time is now spent very differently"

"Much more manageable with the no marking policy - most assessment now happens in lessons"

Continued enhancement of our Employee Wellbeing proposition including:
- introduction of the Trust's Cycle to Work Scheme,
- free flu jabs to staff,
- implementation of a menopause strategy throughout the Trust including a menopause policy and support via menopause ambassadors & menopause cafe's
- Ad Hoc wellbeing initiatives
Trustwide Intranet with easy access to information and all or our Trustwide systems. The intranet currently gets over 22k views a month.

Unsung heroes

Every year, the Trust runs an Unsung Heroes awards programme which is for staff, from staff.

Everyone has the opportunity to nominate colleagues who they believe go above and beyond in the normal course of their day to day activities, into a fantastic prize draw.

Staff can make as many nominations as they wish, and the more nominations an individual receives, the more chance they have of winning.

Prizes are generously donated by local businesses, and range from meals in local pubs and restaurants; days out at local attractions to boxes of wellbeing goodies. in 2023 we even offered a level 2 powerboating course worth over £200!

Nominations start in November, with the winners being selected in December. This is a lovely way to say Thank you to your colleagues for being so great, and anyone who is nominated is notified in person, with a breif (and anonymous) summary of the lovely things their colleagues have said about them. when they were nominated.

Page updated

Report abuse