Where the time actually goes
Ask how long it takes before a new technician can run independently, and the answer usually lands around a year. Ask next where that time goes, and the picture gets vaguer.
Part of it is real learning: knowing the installation, mastering the procedures, building experience with faults. But a considerable part is waiting: for the introduction day to be scheduled, for the mentor to have time, for the situation to come round in which that one operation can actually be watched.
That waiting is the part you can attack without touching the quality.
The buddy problem
Most organisations solve onboarding with a buddy: an experienced colleague the newcomer shadows. That works, and it is irreplaceable for the craft you cannot get out of a module.
But it has three weak points.
The quality depends on who you happen to get. One buddy explains why; another says “just watch how I do it.” Who you get shapes how you work for the next year.
The order is accidental. You learn whatever comes past that week, not what is logical to know first. The rare scenario you were hired for might not turn up until month eight.
And the buddy is expensive. Two people on one task means an experienced technician is partly out of production. That is defensible, but not when it lasts longer than it needs to.
What you pull forward
The gain sits in separating what can happen before arrival from what can only happen on site.
Everything that is knowledge, the layout of the installation, the systems, the safety procedures, the terminology, who owns what, can go digital and can happen before day one. Somebody who already knows on their first day how the installation is laid out and which abbreviations get used does not start at zero, but at the point where the buddy adds value.
What is left for the work floor is the real work: operations, feel, judgement, and the hundred small things you only learn by standing there.
For the rare situations you cannot wait around for, rehearsing in simulation is the alternative. Not to replace the practical side, but to stop somebody meeting a scenario for the first time in month eight, or worse, for real.
The effect on your planning
Organisations that do this often bring the time to independent working down by a third to a half. Not because the learning goes faster, but because the waiting is out.
That has a consequence beyond training costs: it changes your recruitment rhythm. An organisation that needs four months rather than ten can hire twice a year instead of once, and in a tight labour market that is often the deciding consideration.
Start by mapping your current induction period, week by week. In practically every organisation it turns out that the first six weeks consist largely of information somebody could have worked through at home.
Onboarding is usually the first block of a broader training programme. How to build one is in the guide on setting up or renewing a corporate academy. Capturing the knowledge it needs is under expert knowledge, and how this played out at Gasunie is in that case.