New people arrive on the floor continuously: a picker in the goods-in team, an operator on the packing line, someone on the shop floor before a seasonal peak. In most companies the onboarding they get is a folder of procedures, a slide deck built two years ago, and a team leader who is supposed to walk them through it while also running the shift.
The result is uneven by design. Two people who started the same week at two sites received two different inductions, and nobody at head office can say which parts either of them actually got.
The onthaal is a procedure, not a courtesy
Belgian employers do not get to treat this as good practice. Codex art. I.2-15 obliges the employer to organise the onthaal of every worker and to entrust it to a member of the hierarchical line. Art. I.2-11, second paragraph, 9° is more specific still: organise the onthaal of every beginning worker and designate an experienced worker charged with guiding them, and the member of the hierarchical line designated by the employer signs a document under his name showing that the necessary information and instructions regarding wellbeing at work were given.
Three things are hard requirements there. Every beginning worker, without exception. A named experienced colleague as buddy, not "whoever is around". And a signed document per person, which makes this a duty to hold evidence rather than a duty to make an effort.
Art. I.2-21 sits underneath it, requiring sufficient and appropriate training aimed at the worker's own workpost or function, with entry into service named as one of the triggers. Two consequences follow that most induction programmes miss. The training is owed for this workpost, so a company-wide induction deck does not discharge it. And it happens during working hours at the employer's cost, so "watch this at home before you start" is not a compliant design.
In the Netherlands the duty is real but written differently. Arbowet art. 8 requires effective information about the work and its risks and instruction adapted to the worker's distinct tasks, and no form of proof is prescribed. There is no Dutch signature requirement and it is worth not pretending otherwise. But without a registration you cannot demonstrate article 8, and a new starter is precisely the person an inspector will ask about after something goes wrong.
For companies with a VCA certificate there is a third pressure: question 3.5 requires a company specific information and instruction programme that explicitly includes an onthaal or introduction programme for new and reassigned workers.
Five shifts, and what belongs in each
The useful idea in a shift-based ramp is that it separates what must happen before someone touches anything from what can be built up while they work. Roughly:
Before the first task: site access rules, the zones they may and may not enter, emergency and evacuation, PPE, who their buddy is, and the specific hazards of the workpost they are going to. Codex art. I.2-20 makes the first of those a gate rather than a topic, since only workers who have received appropriate instructions may enter zones with serious and specific hazards.
Shifts one and two: the core task itself, done the company's way. The picking sequence and the confirmation step. The changeover and the cleaning sequence. Manual handling for the loads this job actually involves.
Shifts three to five: the things that only make sense once the basics are automatic. Quality checks and what to do when something fails one. Reporting a near-miss. The handover at end of shift. Equipment they will be cleared for later, which is a separate conversation because operating a forklift requires demonstrable competence in both countries, not a diploma that the law names.
By the fifth shift the record should show a complete list per person rather than a general impression.
Where the binder loses
Not because paper is old-fashioned. Because a binder cannot be scoped, cannot be versioned, and cannot be counted. It is the same document for a line operator and a maintenance technician, it is the version that was printed, and once it is signed nobody knows which parts were read.
Aristotl builds the induction from the documents you already maintain: the site rules, the workpost instruction, the machine procedure, the RI&E extract. Modules are three to five minutes and run in the browser on the worker's own phone, without an app installation and without a laptop, so they can be done at the entrance, in the canteen or between two tasks. They are assigned by site and role, so someone starting at plant two gets plant two's risks. Each worker gets the content in their own language automatically, which for a first-week worker is often the difference between understanding a rule and recognising it. Knowledge checks and scenario questions show the content landed.
The buddy and the signed document stay where the Codex puts them, with the hierarchical line. What changes is that the underlying instruction is delivered consistently and is registered per person, per site, per role and per version, so that the document is signed over something demonstrable.
The ramp, and what actually shortens it
Time to productivity is not shortened by cramming more into day one. It is shortened by removing the two things that stretch it: waiting for a slot on someone's calendar, and repeating the same explanation because the first one did not stick.
A new starter who can begin the workpost instruction on their first morning, in a language they read, without waiting for the team leader to find a free hour, is doing productive work earlier. A team leader who is not delivering the same twenty minute talk for the fourth time this month is back on the floor. And a manager who can see on a dashboard that four of five modules are done and which one is missing does not need to ask.
Site managers see their own new starters, filtered to their own sites, and chase their own outstanding names. HQ sees the rollup across every site.
Bring the induction pack from one site and the profile of the person starting next Monday, and we will show you the course they would get and the record you would hold on their fifth shift.