Buddy System

The first column looks trivial and is the reason the system exists. New joiners do not leave because they could not learn the job. They leave because they spent three weeks unsure whom to ask about anything, in an organisation that assumed the answers were obvious.

• Pick a peer at a similar level in an adjacent role, not the strongest performer as a reward and not the person with the most free time.
• Do not assign anyone in the joiner's reporting line, in either direction. A buddy who reports to the joiner, or who assesses them, is not someone the joiner can ask a foolish question.
• Ask the buddy first and let them decline. An unwilling buddy is worse than none, and the joiner will notice within a week.
• Tell the buddy what the role is and how long it lasts. Most buddy programmes fail because nobody told the buddy anything beyond the assignment.
• Give them time for it. Thirty minutes a week for six weeks is a real cost and should be acknowledged as work rather than added to a full load.
• Cap the number of joiners per buddy, and rotate. The same three helpful people carry every new joiner in most organisations.
• Where the joiner is in a group that is underrepresented in the team, consider that carefully rather than mechanically. Automatically matching on gender or background can be thoughtful or can be tokenistic, and asking the joiner is better than assuming.

• Before joining. Contact during the notice period is the single most valuable part, since that is when the joiner is most doubtful and most reachable by a counter-offer. A message from a future colleague does something the recruiter cannot.
• Week one. Daily brief contact, in person or on a call. The questions are constant and small in this week.
• Weeks two to four. Twice weekly, tapering. The joiner starts to know who to ask directly, which is the point.
• Weeks five to eight. Weekly, then a stated close, with an explicit handover of any continuing relationship to normal working contact.
• Throughout, keep it separate from assessment. The buddy should not be asked how the joiner is doing, and telling them they will be asked destroys the role immediately.
• For remote and distributed joiners, schedule everything. The informal contact that carries a colocated joiner does not occur remotely, and unscheduled means it does not happen.
• For frontline and shift roles, match the buddy to the shift. A buddy on a different shift is a name on a form.

Buddies are given a quasi-official position without training, and the boundaries need to be explicit.

• Terms of employment, salary, statutory entitlements and policy questions go to HR. A buddy guessing at notice periods or leave rules creates an expectation the organisation then has to correct.
• Performance feedback belongs to the manager. A buddy relaying an impression of how the joiner is doing turns the relationship into an assessment channel.
• Grievances and harassment complaints must be routed properly. Tell buddies where the complaint mechanism is and that their role is to point at it, not to handle it, investigate it or advise on it. A complaint raised with a buddy and never routed is an organisation on notice that did nothing.
• Confidential information about other employees is not buddy material, and neither is commentary on managers.
• Where the joiner is struggling in a way that concerns the buddy, the route is to encourage them to speak to the manager or HR, and to raise a genuine safety or wellbeing concern directly rather than sit on it.

Verify the complaint routes required under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and your grievance mechanism under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 when briefing buddies, since knowing where to send a complaint is the one piece of process a buddy genuinely needs.