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Get ‘em Started Off Right with Great Orientation
By Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette
Everyone's been to Employee Orientations, more or fewer of them depending on your ability to keep a job. And unless you've worked for one of the relatively few employers that's really good at this rite of entry, you probably saw the standard procedure: herd everyone who's joined the company since the last one of these affairs into a cramped meeting room. Start with the senior executive most desperately in need of a Toastmasters membership standing at the podium spewing corporate pablum all over the audience. Those seated in the first couple of rows will get relatively more pablum on them than those who have been to other orientations and therefore know to sit in the back.
The agenda then reads as follows:
Someone from Human Resources hands out the employee handbook, a tome the size of an unabridged dictionary, and reads it to you word for word.
Next, a more cheery soul is trotted out to showcase the company's many amenities designed to make life more enjoyable at work. Such as the location, cost, and payment procedure for the company coffee, information on the corporate gym, and where you get to park should you ever ascend to the status of “Employee of the Month".
Then, what everyone really came for in the first place – to learn about benefits. This again resembles storytime, as everyone receives a book that is read aloud (nowadays with PowerPoint™ accompaniment), detailing when people and their families may get sick, what diseases they may contract, and what hoops they must jump through before getting treatment. Much time is taken here also to let employees know how to buy discount tickets to nearby second-tier attractions.
Get out your pens and get ready to write! Here you will repeat the handwritten version of your life story, which you submitted when you applied for the job. The session closes anticlimactically with the W-4's, I-9's, and various other forms.
With little fanfare, you are dubbed “orientated" (you know that's not a word, I hope) and sent out to the battlefield to begin what your employer hopes will be a long and profitable career.
When you get to your duty station, you are likely to have at least three important, though as yet unanswered questions:
- What does this company stand for?
- Where do I go if I need help doing my job?
- How do you work the phones?
First, look at orientation for what it is: training. Companies like Marriott Hotels and Rosenbluth Travel realize that orientation sets the tone and expectations for future, more job-specific training, and indeed for the whole work experience. I won't repeat the worn-out phrase about first impressions, but this is where you tell your new workforce ``here's how we do things around here". If you do things first class, don't run your orientation in steerage.
Orientation is your first best chance to give people a feel for what your organization is all about. So don't just teach them how to fill out their time card, teach them what you stand for.
Because this is so important for later performance, Disney, for example, requires every single new employee--no matter what their station in life--to attend a comprehensive orientation called Disney Traditions. Here they make sure the new ``cast member" is carefully and methodically introduced to the company's traditions, philosophies, and a very different way of life--the Disney way.
Leslie Gibbons, from The Villages, a massive premier retirement community near Ocala, Florida, proudly describes her company's orientation. They start with a continental breakfast with baked goods from their own bakery. Then, three of the top executives, all siblings in this family-owned business, greet each new employee and then tell the history of The Villages from a family perspective, using anecdotes and illustrations to bring alive the company's five stated values. For instance, Operations Director Mark Morse might illustrate one of their values, hospitality, with a quote from Ben Franklin, saying, "the taste of the roast is determined by the handshake of the host."
Give new employees the big picture, some idea of what goes on outside their area of the business. Metromedia Restaurant Group, the Plano, Texas headquarters for Steak & Ale, Bennigan's, Ponderosa, and Bonanza, accomplishes this goal with creativity and fun. According to Metromedia's Sherri Hancock, employees attending orientation at the corporate office are sent off on a scavenger hunt, perhaps to collect a business card from someone in another department, or to bring back a picture of themselves with the employee with the longest tenure.
Tell them what the company values and rewards, and what they can do to make the most of what they want – more money, more opportunity, a greater contribution. That's far more valuable to a new employee than where to find the paper clips.
Follow-up. In one company I know, the top brass gets back together with each new class of employees for an "Orientation Reunion" a few months after the event. They sit down with the reunited group and ask, "OK, here's what we promised you on the day you started. Where have we hit the mark, and where have we missed it?" They listen and then get to work addressing any deficiencies or inconsistencies.
Evaluate the orientation. Remember, this is training. Your best ideas, about what to keep, and what to throw out, come from your customers – even if they are just the new kids on the block.
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.