Onboarding Temporary Help: The First Day Prepared in 30 Minutes

For temporary help for a day or a weekend, onboarding feels like a luxury — "they'll just pitch in". Exactly this thinking is why short-term assignments so often go wrong: the person stands there, doesn't know where the locker is, who to ask, when the break is — and after two hours is frustrated instead of productive. Yet good temporary-help onboarding needs no day. It needs 30 minutes of preparation and a clear sequence.

This plan is immediately usable. Not an HR concept, but a sequence you can implement this afternoon.

What you handle beforehand you save threefold on the first day:

• Write the task down in five sentences. What exactly, how, with what, in which order. This note is half your onboarding.
• Name one fixed contact person. One name, not "just ask someone". Otherwise nobody knows who.
• Lay out access & materials. Keys, locker, work clothes, tools, login — everything that otherwise turns into a scavenger hunt.
• Record the essential conditions. Activity, place, start, duration, working time, pay. Short-term employment too needs clear agreements; the Verification of Employment Conditions Act (Nachweisgesetz) is the frame (BMAS — Nachweisgesetz). That protects both sides, not only the person.
• Clarify breaks & times. When a break, how long, when the end — with a view to the Working Time Act (BMAS — Arbeitszeitgesetz).

A simple sequence that carries almost any short-term assignment:

1. Welcome & orientation (5 min). Name, contact person, short tour: entrance, locker, toilet, break room. Sounds trivial, is the most common stress factor on day one.
2. Show the task, don't just explain it (10 min). Demonstrating once beats ten minutes of talking — especially when German isn't yet perfect. Let the person do one step themselves while you stand by.
3. Safety concretely (5 min). What's dangerous, what's mandatory (shoes, gloves, machines), where the emergency exit is. For physical work this is not negotiable.
4. Breaks, times, end (3 min). When a break, how time is recorded, when and where it ends.
5. "Better ask once too often" (2 min). Say this sentence explicitly. It lowers the inhibition threshold and prevents the expensive silent mistakes.

Five minutes invested per block — and the person is productive after half an hour instead of lost.

For temporary help, Minijob, and short-term employment, clean recording of working time is no bureaucratic extra but your proof that the minimum wage (2026: €13.90/hr) was observed. Clarify before the first hour how it's recorded — time clock, list, app. That protects you in inspections and the person from "forgotten" hours. A common, avoidable conflict arises exactly here.

Onboarding doesn't end with training but with the close. A short feedback at the end of the shift — "That went well, next time please like this" — and an honest thank-you cost two minutes and decide whether the person comes back. With flexible staff, the reliable temporary help you already know is worth more than any new search. Whoever was treated fairly and clearly on the first day is your first call at the next bottleneck — and more likely to say yes.

Exactly here the circle closes to the article "Trust in short-term recruiting": good onboarding is lived trust, not a form.

Temporary-help onboarding is not a question of effort but of preparation: 30 minutes beforehand, a clear half hour on site, clean time tracking, two minutes of feedback at the end. That's how "they'll just pitch in" becomes a person who is productive, gladly comes back — and whom you reach directly again next time via Vardio.