The Story

We're making induction easier for everyone.

That's because we believe every person deserves to have a great start so that they can quickly become successful in their new role.

Our Origins

The Induction Company is a sister company to Optimism (Projects). Sussan Ockwell, the founder of both companies, established Optimism in 1992. Optimism has become a leading provider of capability strategies and learning solutions for corporates and government departments.

The company has developed particular expertise in digital learning technologies, and has won multiple international awards as a result.

One of Optimism's specialties has always been company induction, with 30+ years of designing and developing innovative induction programmes for large corporates and government departments.
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After having first created The Induction App™ under the Optimism banner, and then recognising its potential, Sussan founded The Induction Company to focus on bringing it to the global market as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.

Sowing The Seed

How It All Started

The Induction App itself was born out of Optimism's deep exeperience and
desire to make great induction affordable and accessible for smaller companies. Sussan explains how it happened...
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One Saturday morning at 8am in a conference room during one of our 6-monthly Strategic Weekends.
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My first team, made up of learning partners, designers and developers, was ready to pitch their solution for the new Dyson’s electric car campus in South Auckland, in response to their request for us to design a “blue skies” induction solution for them.
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I watched proudly and delightedly as, after this 24-hour mock challenge, my three talented teams pitched their solution design, mock-ups, and costing for their approach to this blue skies induction solution.
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After watching all three pitches, I was stunned to realise that, without any collusion and in fact intense competition, there was a very similar concept at the core of each of their ideal induction solutions.
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After that Strategic Weekend, back in the office, we started refining the concept a little more and created a prototype. We showed it to a few Optimism clients and they were all impressed. Then we pitched it to Waikato-Tainui who came to us for an induction solution. They loved it! In fact a few months after we had implemented it, Kelly their HR Manager went from explaining how frustrated and over-worked she felt, to telling us “I still can’t believe how much time I’m not spending on induction now!”
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And that’s when I realised we really had something pretty special.
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Based on that success, the encouragement of other clients, and the enthusiasm of our super-talented fullstack developer (ie. Kane), we started re-designing it from the ground up to create what is now known as The Induction App™.