Your new starter can’t read your mind. They can’t see into the future, either.

They don’t know that the trolley has a dodgy wheel, how to report a near miss, or where to go when the alarm sounds—unless someone tells them.

And yet “everyone knows that” sometimes seems to be the entire training plan.

When you’ve worked somewhere for years, it’s easy to forget that what feels obvious to you might be completely unfamiliar to someone else.

You know the procedures. You know the people. You’ve picked things up through training, conversations and experience.

Your new starter hasn’t had any of that yet.

“Everyone knows that.”

Do they?

Everyone knows where to go when the alarm sounds.

Everyone knows how to report an incident.

Everyone knows who to speak to when something feels unsafe.

Except the person who started on Monday. Or the casual covering a shift. Or the employee who was shown once, six months ago, while trying to remember fifteen other things.

“Everyone knows” is a big assumption to build workplace safety around.

People don’t always know what to ask.

“Any questions?” is a useful invitation. But silence doesn’t tell you whether someone understands.

They might be embarrassed to ask. They might think they’ll work it out later. They might have misunderstood something without realising it.

Or they might not know enough yet to recognise what they’re missing.

If nobody has explained what a near miss is, why would they ask how to report one?

If they’ve never experienced a workplace evacuation, how would they know which details matter?

“Just ask someone” leaves a lot riding on someone knowing when, what and whom to ask.

Start with the basics. Even the obvious ones.

A person may have spent twenty years in the workforce and still be brand new to your workplace, your equipment and your procedures.

Respect their experience, but start without assuming they already know what you need them to know.

Explain the task, the risks, the process and the reason behind it.

Show them where to find information. Make it clear who they can speak to. Give them room to ask questions without feeling like they’ve failed a test.

Then check understanding with something more useful than “All good?”

Try:

• “Who would you tell if you spotted a hazard?”

• “Where would you go if we needed to evacuate?”

• “What would you do if this equipment looked damaged?”

Those conversations give you a chance to fill the gaps before someone needs to act.

A signature doesn’t tell the whole story.

An induction form records that a step has been completed. It doesn’t, on its own, show what someone has understood or remembers.

The aim is for people to recognise a concern, know how to report it and feel comfortable speaking up.

Because “someone should have told me” is a frustrating thing to hear after a mistake.

It’s also a useful reminder to ask ourselves: did we actually explain it—or did we assume?

So here we are, telling you.

Don’t assume people know what you know.

Teach the basics. Explain your workplace procedures. Check understanding. Keep the conversation open.

Click Compliance’s Online Workplace Health and Safety Training helps employees and new starters build foundational knowledge of hazards, incident reporting, emergency procedures and safe work practices.

It’s approximately one hour of self-paced online learning, with an automatically issued Certificate of Completion, designed to sit alongside your own workplace induction and procedures.

You don’t need a crystal ball to predict every situation. You need to give people the knowledge to recognise a problem, speak up and know what to do next.

“Someone should have told me.”

Let’s make sure someone did.

Click Compliance. Compliance, just a click away.