A staffing agency may be able to recruit a large number of workers ready to start on a Monday morning at 6:00. However, if the company has only one person issuing workwear, two employees conducting training and just 20 workstations ready at the same time, problems begin to appear. In that situation, recruitment itself is not the issue. A large group of new employees requires additional attention and a properly planned first day.
In this article
- What needs to be ready before the new group arrives
- How many workers can the company onboard in one day
- Where bottlenecks appear during the first shift
- How to prepare training, equipment and access to work
- What shift leaders need to know before the group arrives
- How the company and staffing agency can divide preparations
- FAQ
1. A confirmed group is only half of the preparation
Let us assume that a company needs 40 new production workers. The staffing agency has completed its part of the process: recruitment has been carried out, candidates have been verified and a group is ready to start on the agreed date. The client company also has its own preparation to complete.
Once they enter the facility, every person still needs to receive the required equipment, complete the necessary training, know where their workstation is located and understand how to access the tools they need. With a group of five people, the process will probably run relatively smoothly. With 20, 30 or 50 new employees starting together, the existing organisation of the first day may no longer be sufficient.
That is why a large recruitment project also requires preparation on the client’s side. Agreeing on the number of workers and their start date is not enough. It is also useful to determine the maximum number of people who can be properly trained and introduced to the workplace on the first day.
This connects directly with preparing the right recruitment brief. We have discussed this in more detail in our article on what a staffing agency needs before recruitment. Simply saying, “we need 40 people from Monday” does not yet tell us whether the company is ready for all 40 to begin at the same time.
2. Onboarding capacity can limit how many people can start at once
To plan the process properly, it helps to look at an employee’s first day as a sequence of stages they have to pass through.
At some workplaces, issuing workwear to 40 people may already take a considerable amount of time. The same group then needs to use changing facilities, complete training, meet the shift leader and eventually reach the prepared workstation.
If one stage can handle only 10 people at a time while the remaining 30 have to wait, that stage becomes the real bottleneck of the entire onboarding process.
Workwear is a simple example. If preparing one employee takes around 10 minutes and only one person handles the process, dealing with 40 workers would take more than six hours. The same problem can occur when issuing access cards, scanners, tools or system access.
Starting more people at exactly the same time is therefore not always the best solution. It can be more effective to divide the group into smaller teams that complete their training on the same day but at different times. The introduction can also be spread across several days if the number of trainers or available workstations does not allow the whole group to be onboarded properly at once.
A structured and planned employee onboarding process matters particularly at this scale. Leaving the adaptation of a large group to improvised decisions made after people have already arrived rarely creates good conditions for an efficient start.
3. Employees should arrive at a workstation that is ready for them
When a larger group starts together, it is easy to focus primarily on getting everyone through the entrance and onto the production floor or into the warehouse. However, what happens once the employee actually reaches the workstation matters just as much.
A new employee should not spend the beginning of the first shift waiting for tools, looking for materials or trying to find out which device they are allowed to use. The workstation should be prepared so that once the formalities and training are complete, the employee can move directly into the actual introduction to the job.
Depending on the process, this may include:
- prepared tools and materials,
- a working scanner, terminal or other device,
- active access to the required system,
- a clearly designated workstation,
- access to instructions or the required work standard,
- a product, material or order that can be used during training,
- clear information about which activities can already be performed independently and which require additional training.
This becomes particularly important when many new employees start together. If one person has to wait for a workstation to be prepared, the situation can usually be corrected relatively easily. If the same issue affects 30 employees, a significant part of the first shift may be lost before the actual onboarding has even started.
A ready workstation is also more than a physical place on a production line or in a warehouse. The employee needs to know what a correctly completed task looks like and which standard their work will be assessed against.
If a new group starts in packaging, it can help to prepare an example of a correctly packed product, the required sequence of activities and the method used to identify errors. For warehouse workers, this could include scanner procedures, the location of relevant zones and instructions for handling discrepancies.
The principle remains the same whether one new person or an entire group is starting. The difference is scale – the same level of preparation has to be available across many workstations at the same time.
4. Training needs to be planned together with the start date
With a large group, one of the most important limitations may be the number of people the company can train properly at the same time.
It is therefore not enough to know that training will take place. The company also needs to know who will conduct it, how many people can participate at once and how much time is required before employees can be assigned to their workstations.
In the Netherlands, the company hiring temporary staff has the main responsibility for providing a safe and healthy workplace. Dutch government guidance also requires the hirer to provide the temporary employment agency with the relevant workplace risk information from its RI&E. Business.gov.nl explains the health and safety responsibilities when employing temporary workers.
Workplace-specific safety training should therefore not be treated as a document that simply needs to be signed. Dutch employers must provide employees with information about their health and safety policy and explain how work can be carried out safely, including where relevant the correct use of personal protective equipment. The Dutch government describes these requirements for safe working conditions here.
For one new employee, organising this process usually does not create a major capacity problem.
With 40 people, the situation is different.
If a company has two people available to conduct workplace instruction and each of them can properly support only a limited number of newcomers, trainer availability may determine the actual size of the group that can start.
Having 40 people arrive at the same hour will not make all 40 of them reach their workstations any faster.
5. The shift leader should know about the group before it appears on the floor
Preparing equipment, documents and training still does not solve the entire issue.
Once these stages are complete, someone has to take responsibility for the new employees.
The shift leader should know in advance:
- how many new employees will join the team,
- which workstations they will be assigned to,
- which people may require additional support,
- how many experienced employees can be involved during their first hours of work.
If the shift leader learns at the beginning of the shift that 20 new people have to be taken over, it is difficult to expect them to organise proper onboarding, keep the existing team running and maintain the normal capacity of the process at the same time.
For that reason, workforce planning for a large start should consider not only the physical number of available workstations, but also how many experienced people are available to support the new group during the first shift.
This also matters for employees’ later adjustment. Research on organisational onboarding indicates that role clarity, social support and task mastery are important elements of how new employees adapt to an organisation.
This does not mean that a specific retention percentage can be attributed to a well-organised first day. It does show, however, that the way work begins affects the conditions in which a new employee learns the role and starts functioning within the team.
With international workers, communication adds another factor. If workplace instructions or organisational information need to be provided in a particular language, the company should determine in advance who can provide them and whether visual materials or support from a coordinator will be needed. For hazardous work in the Netherlands, language ability may also form part of the safety requirements.
6. The staffing agency and the hirer need one onboarding plan
With a larger group, it is not enough to establish who is responsible for recruitment and who is responsible for the workplace itself. Both processes need to be connected in one onboarding plan.
| Area | Staffing agency | Hirer / client company |
| Group confirmation | recruitment and confirmation of candidates | defining staffing demand and start dates |
| Information before the start | collecting agreed information from workers | defining which information is required |
| First-day organisation | informing workers where and when to report | organising access and the people receiving the group |
| Safety and workplace information | informing workers about agreed organisational details and workplace risks supplied by the client | providing safe working conditions, workplace-specific instructions and required safety information |
| Equipment | providing agreed worker information needed for preparation | preparing workwear, PPE, tools and devices |
| Workstations | recruitment according to the agreed candidate profile | preparing workplaces and employees responsible for onboarding |
The most important point is to determine how many people the company can realistically receive in one day.
A business may need 60 temporary workers, and the agency may be able to recruit all of them. If the site can properly onboard only 20 people per day, however, three planned start dates may be a better solution than one large start.
This approach does not slow the project down. It prevents a large part of the new group from spending the first day waiting for workwear, training, equipment or an available shift leader.
At Intraservis, we therefore need to know not only how many workers the client needs and by when, but also how many of them can realistically begin work on each planned start date.
If you are planning to bring in a larger group, tell us how many workers you need and when you need them. Together, we can plan the recruitment schedule and determine how many people your site can properly receive and onboard each day.
FAQ
Do all temporary workers have to start on the same day?
No. If trainer availability, workstations, equipment or the company’s organisational capacity are limited, it may be better to divide the start into several groups or several consecutive days.
Who is responsible for health and safety when temporary workers start in the Netherlands?
The hirer has the main responsibility for providing temporary workers with a safe and healthy workplace. The company must also provide the temporary employment agency with relevant workplace risk information from the RI&E, while the agency must inform temporary workers about the risks they may encounter. Dutch government guidance explains this division of responsibilities in more detail.
What should be prepared before a larger group starts?
The company should prepare the arrival schedule, required safety training, workwear and PPE, access cards, tools or devices, system access, ready workstations and the people responsible for receiving and onboarding the new employees.
