Summer hires: the 30-minute induction that protects them and you

What changed

Seasonal hiring is the change. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, workers under 18 need their risk assessment to specifically consider their inexperience, their lack of awareness of risks, and their physical and mental maturity — before they start. If your risk assessment was written for a team of experienced adults, it does not cover the 17-year-old starting Saturday.

A guide you can act on this week

Run a 30-minute first-day induction and record it:

• Show, don't tell: walk the fire exits, assembly point and first-aid kit physically.
• Name the things they must not do yet — the slicer, the fryer, the compactor, lone closing.
• Introduce their named buddy for the first two weeks and put it on the rota.
• Ten-question quiz at the end — not to catch them out, but to prove the induction happened and landed.

Keep the signed sheet. If anything ever happens, "we inducted them properly and here is the record" is the first question you will be asked.

A lesson from the field

A café owner put a new starter on the meat slicer during a lunch rush in week one. The injury was minor; the investigation was not. Because there was no documented induction and no supervision arrangement, what could have been an unfortunate accident was treated as a management failure. The fix — a written "not yet" list and a two-week buddy system — costs nothing.

One number

Workers are as likely to be injured in their first six months with an employer as in the whole of the rest of their time there, HSE's guidance on new starters notes. The risk is front-loaded; your attention should be too.

Not sure this applies to you?

If you are hiring for the season, it does. Book a free 15-minute compliance check and we'll sanity-check your induction pack before the rush.

This is general guidance, not legal advice, and doesn’t replace a site-specific risk assessment.