Helping small UK businesses get new starters set up properly
First Day Ready is the sister company of Penshaw View, a family-run health and safety and HR business based in Sunderland in the North East of England. Penshaw View was established in 2005 to provide health and safety training for local businesses, and today it supports businesses across the country.
We draw on Penshaw View's experience across a wide range of sectors: health and safety consultancy (risk assessment and management, audits that find the gaps in procedures, incident management and tailored advice), health and safety training delivered online and face to face, and outsourced HR advice across the whole employee lifecycle, from contracts and policies to absence, discipline and grievance, family leave, flexible working, probation, redundancy and TUPE.
That experience shows the same thing again and again. A small business takes on a new member of staff, everyone is busy, and the induction gets squeezed in between customers. The paperwork is pieced together from scattered guidance, safety information is covered on the fly, and nobody is quite sure what's been done. It isn't for want of caring. Bigger firms have HR departments for this, and most small businesses don't.
So we built First Day Ready to give small and medium-sized employers across Great Britain a ready-made way to do it properly. It takes a new starter from "offer accepted" to "probation signed off": what to sort out before they start, what to cover on day one, a plan for the first week and the first 90 days, a fair probation review, and a proper checklist for when someone leaves. There are sector packs for hospitality, retail, care, construction and offices, an employee handbook starter and a tracker that works in Excel or Google Sheets.
Everything is written in plain English for UK employers, checked against official guidance from GOV.UK, Acas and the HSE, and points you to those sources so you can check the current position. It's practical guidance and templates, not legal advice. Every template is editable in Word or Google Docs, with space for your own logo and company name, so it looks like it came from your business, because it did.
You can buy the full kit or just the single template you need. If something isn't clear, or there's a template you'd like to see, send us a message through Etsy.
Need more than a template? Our sister company, Penshaw View, offers hands-on health and safety consultancy, health and safety training and HR support for businesses across the country. Send us a message and we'll put you in touch.
Practical induction templates from First Day Ready, drawing on the health and safety and HR experience of our sister company, Penshaw View, and checked against official UK guidance. Created using modern design tools.