A successful New Employee Orientation Program:
- takes time to develop
- uses a systematic approach to gathering information
- has the support of senior management
- is a unique program, but easily customizable
The key points to remember about a well-planned program are:
Successful counseling programs take time to develop. This is not a quick or overnight solution to your employee retention and engagement challenges. In some cases, it can take months to gather the necessary information and prepare an effective program. Be prepared to spend the necessary time and resources if you are committed to creating a worthwhile program.
You should use a systematic approach to gathering information to ensure that everyone affected by the new program has an opportunity to contribute and that the true needs of the new hire are discovered and addressed.
Many of the same techniques your organization currently uses to research your customers will easily be leveraged to determine your employees’ likes, dislikes, needs, and wants.
Do not skimp on this process. If the program you ultimately launch doesn’t obviously meet the needs of the new hire, it will be dropped and departments will go back to using their own processes. Can you imagine the money it would have cost your company if you had spent even six months developing the “company-wide” New Employee Orientation Program?
Like any other company-wide initiative, the New Employee Orientation program must have the support of senior management, supervisors, and the human resources team. Getting this support is crucial for the development team to proceed with surveys etc. and to be assigned a project budget, but an equally important reason for getting executive buy-in is to get “buy-in” from the entire company. Without everyone in the organization fully understanding that this initiative is supported by senior management and is truly a company-wide initiative, individual departments or work groups will continue to use their own “ad hoc” methods of onboarding. new.
Also keep in mind that it is one thing to have management support on paper, perhaps buried in the middle of a few minutes for a meeting somewhere, but another thing to have this support clearly and unambiguously communicated throughout the organization. Make sure your New Employee Orientation Program initiative is well known by marketing the idea on your company intranet and newsletters. Include letters from executives who support the project and describe its benefits. Maybe consider an official launch party and invite everyone.
The goals of the program must also be clearly communicated to everyone in the organization and be consistent with the goals of the organization. The objectives of any project that your organization is willing to pay for must align with the needs of the organization. There must be a clear business reason for spending time and money to develop an effective New Employee Orientation Program. If one of the business needs is to reduce employee turnover by 20% in the next three months, for example, one of the goals of the new employee orientation program should be to reduce employee turnover by 20% in the next three months. that time.
The heart of the program should be a unique, multi-purpose program that has been designed for the most frequently hired level of employee. But your new employee training program must also be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of your organization. A completely new program is not needed for each level of employee that joins. By building your program for the most common cases using easily customizable components, reinvention of the wheel is minimized, thereby reducing the initial cost of hiring a new employee.
Here is a sample checklist for those developing a new employee orientation. For maximum results, a clear project management approach should be adopted that includes work breakdown structures, milestones, and Gantt charts. The times listed are for guidelines only and will likely vary in different organizations and depending on whether the program is delivered in a group meeting, online, individually, or a combination. The point here is to start developing the plan well in advance of your new employee’s first day.
Also note that the tasks listed in the first eight months are for program development. Once you have implemented the program, only items from the last two weeks need to be repeated for each employee.
SIX TO EIGHT MONTHS Before Program Launch
- Decide the best time to deliver each piece of program content based on interviews with recently hired employees. Also consider any mandatory time requirements set by industry or union standards.
- Determine the goal(s) of the program. Remember to align these goals with your organization’s business goals, mission, and vision. This knowledge will help “sell” the mentoring program to the executives/managers in the organization who will pay for it. Be sure to answer the question: “What are the current/future business needs that guidance will cover?”
- Determine the specific learning objectives to be met by the orientation program. What does the new employee need to know, do and believe when they finish the program? Align these learning objectives with the goals of the program.
- Identify supervisors, subject matter experts, managers, course developers, trainers, webmasters, HR professionals, and employees who could contribute and request their support.
- Interview employees with one or two years of experience. What was your experience as a new employee? Remember to take advantage of your organization’s current customer research methods.
- Conduct a Target Audience Analysis (TAA). A TAA gives you enough relevant information to design an effective targeting program by identifying the most common audience characteristics and highlighting how many custom modules (if any) you’ll need to create.
- Review exit interviews for employees who left within a year of being hired and identify what could have been done differently during orientation to improve retention. Determining why left will give you a very good idea of what should be included in the New Orientation Program. For example, if they stated that they did not feel well enough trained to perform as required, then be sure to incorporate a comprehensive on-the-job training component into your New Hire Orientation Program. This is a basic example, but I think you get the idea.
FOUR TO SIX MONTHS Before program launch
- Coordinate logistics. Talk to the right people to arrange tours of their apartments. Classroom book, technical equipment and other training aids.
- Create a detailed plan for the new hire’s first day.
- Create activities for both orientation sessions and “at desk” time. Include the goal/purpose and time for each.
- Decide how the content will be delivered (large group, small group, self-directed, etc.) considering when the information needs to be delivered. Not all information needs to be delivered in the same way. The use of a variety of media provides the new employee with a broader and more complete learning experience.
- Decide what should be done for the new employee’s family. This step is not necessary for all types of work, but for some, such as jobs that require long absences from home, it is necessary to include the family in the orientation process.
- Determine how to represent the “corporate culture” of the organization.
- Develop written material such as the employee handbook or workbook. Prepare audiovisual scripts, visuals, etc.
- Identify the best presenters for in-person pieces of content.
- Prepare presenter materials.
- Review learning objectives and delivery methods with presenters.
THREE TO FOUR MONTHS Before program launch
- Decide how you will evaluate the new orientation process to ensure that the program has achieved its stated goals.
ONE TO TWO MONTHS Before program launch
- Run a beta training of the new program with newly hired employees who did not receive orientation.
- Make any necessary adjustments.
- Recognize advisory board/task group members for their efforts.
- Train New Hire Orientation facilitators and supervisors.
TWO WEEKS Before the new employee arrives
- Arrange installation of computer/software and phone.
- Gather relevant organizational materials
- Coordinate a first significant work assignment.
- Identify and contact possible “friends”.
- Identify and contact potential mentors.
- Request business cards.
- Apply for company credit cards or set up a spending account.
- Order ID badge/security pass.
- Order supplies.
- Prepare work standards (check with HR team and/or union representative).
- Prepare work area/desk; remove the signs of the previous employee.
- Schedule orientation sessions for new hires.
- Send an internal memo to co-workers announcing the new hire’s name, title, arrival date and duties.
- Send a welcome letter confirming the time, date and place of presentation.
- Send welcome letter.
- Set up an email/voicemail account.
- Configure network identification.
As you can see, developing a comprehensive new employee orientation program really isn’t a quick or overnight solution to your employee retention and engagement challenges, but following these checklists and a clear orientation management methodology projects will make the process much more manageable. And, it really is worth the effort. A well designed and delivered program increases employee engagement and retention. And increased employee engagement and retention allows you to keep and earn more money.