The Manual That Writes Itself: Training a New Starter with AI

Last month we got AI planning your week. This month, a week that's harder to plan for: a new starter's first.

You know how it usually goes. Training happens on the van, between jobs, when someone has a minute. The new lad asks the same forty questions every new lad asks, and the answer depends on who he asks. Three months later he's picked most of it up, some of it right, some of it however Dave does it. Nobody planned any of that. There was never time.

Here's how to fix it with AI, without writing a single manual yourself.

Step 1. Record what you already say

Next time you're explaining something — how to fill in the job sheet, how you want a van loaded, what to check before drilling into a lintel line, how to leave a customer's house — hit record on your phone first. Voice memo, thirty seconds to five minutes. You were saying it anyway. Now it's captured. It will feel weird to begin but persist.

Step 2. Turn the recordings into guides

Get the recording transcribed (your phone or the AI tool will do it), then paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot with this: "Turn this into a one-page guide for a brand new window installer. Plain English, numbered steps, and a short list of common mistakes at the end." Thirty seconds later you've got a clean guide, written from your own words, in your own way of doing things.

Step 3. Build the first-week pack

After a few weeks of this you'll have guides for the jobs that matter: completing job sheets, van stock and tool checks, how we behave in a customer's home, sign-off and photos, who to ring for what. Ask AI to pull them into one document with a contents page. That's your first-week pack. Total writing time on your part: zero.

Step 4. Make it something they can question

Here's the clever bit. Tell your new starter to upload the pack into a free AI chat and ask it questions. "What photos do I take at handover?" "What goes on the van every morning?" They get an instant answer drawn from your pack, in seconds, without ringing you on another job. And give them the rule: if the answer isn't in the pack, ask me, and then we add it. If you want to take that a step further, add the guides into your internal use GlazingBot. That’s already loaded with the products you fit and the industry we operate in. Now you have every answer they may possibly want. And you don’t need to keep providing it!

Step 5. Keep it alive

Every question that isn't covered becomes a new voice memo and a new page. Six months from now you'll have a proper training manual. It built itself, one explanation at a time.

What about the questions you can't record?

Some things never get explained out loud because they feel obvious to you. Postcodes to allow extra time for. Which merchant to try first when something's out of stock. How to word a text to a customer when you're running late. Once a month, ask your newest starter what confused them that week, and record your answer. The stuff that's obvious to you is exactly what the pack is missing.

The one rule

Anything safety-related gets checked properly. General AI tools like ChatGPT, CoPilot etc. can tidy up your words, but RAMS, working at height, and anything from official guidance comes from the source, not from ‘the internet’. Read every guide before it goes in the pack. It's your name on how these jobs get done.

What to expect

The first recording feels odd. By the fifth it's habit. The real payoff comes with the next hire: a first week that costs you hours instead of days, and a starter who stops asking Dave.

Your knowledge is the most valuable thing in your business, and right now most of it is only in your head. Fifteen minutes of voice memos a week gets it out. Start with the next thing you explain.