Allocating Time And Resources For Acclimating New Employees To The Organization Is An Investment.
By Thomas J. Roach
First impressions can have a long-lasting impact on employee performance and morale. Allocating time and resources for acclimating new employees to the organization is an investment that will pay dividends over all the years they work at the company.
Onboarding new employees is not just about preparing them to do a job. New employees are confronted by a new culture with a vocabulary, social norms and expectations that need to be assimilated through human interaction.
Some companies have gone from bad to worse. Bad was the traditional method of sitting new hires in a human resources conference room and showing them slides for eight hours. Worse is replacing the boring meeting with boring PowerPoint presentations.
Ideally, new employees are not shut up in a room all day or sent off independently to sit at computers. If several new employees are being initiated at one time, they can be treated as a cohort, introduced to one another, and taken through the process of orientation as a team.
A degree of bonding develops between employees who start at the same time. Organizations can take advantage of this by sponsoring monthly then yearly social gatherings so cohort members can share their experiences and reactions.
Orientation
The orientation process itself can take place on the go and can be combined with a tour. For a group of new hires, the information they need can be broken into segments and delivered at different locations within the facility or campus. Managers and future coworkers can be designated to deliver the appropriate onboarding information as the tour reaches their areas. For instance, safety managers can provide initial safety training surrounded by the heavy equipment they are talking about.
The walk around the facilities might begin with a visit to the office of the owner or senior manager who would explain the organization’s mission and goals. A question-and-answer session here would be informative while also demonstrating an atmosphere of open communication with management.
Encouraging the new hires to talk among themselves will speed up the learning process, so frequent breaks and a leisurely lunch might be built into the agenda. Also, in addition to the prepared speakers, new employees can be introduced to other coworkers they meet on the tour, and they can have brief conversations with them as well.
Human Resources will probably have to speak to the cohort in a meeting room with a presentation program, handouts, and papers to sign. The day can end when the new hires go off to meet with their work groups and supervisors.
A smaller organization can condense the tour. For instance, a half-day orientation could start with the tour and presentations, take a morning break, finish the tour and presentations, and conclude with lunch.
If a company is dealing with only one new hire at a time, the mentor or supervisor can conduct the tour, and the new hire can be dropped off and picked up for private meetings with staff at human resources in their home areas.
Acclimation
Acclimating oneself to a new culture takes more than a day. Mentors should be assigned for all new employees. If there is only one new hire, the mentor can conduct the orientation tour. If it is a group, they can be introduced to their mentors by their managers at the end of the process.
If time is allotted, mentors can then show the new employees their assigned areas, introduce them to coworkers, and even start job-specific training.
The sooner new employees come up to speed in their new surroundings, the sooner they will become productive. Organizations that want to manage the quality of their products and services need to pay attention to the quality of their work culture, and that starts with onboarding.
Thomas J. Roach Ph.D., has 30 years experience in communication as a journalist, media coordinator, communication director and consultant. He has taught at Purdue University Northwest since 1987, and is the author of “An Interviewing Rhetoric.” He can be reached at [email protected].