Planning Your New Employee Orientation Program

A successful New Employee Orientation Program:

• takes time to develop
• uses a systematic approach to collect information
• has the support of top management
• it 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 collect 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 employee are discovered and addressed.

Many of the same techniques that your organization currently uses to research its customers will be easily harnessed to determine the likes, dislikes, needs, and wants of your employees.

Don’t skimp on this process. If the program you finally 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 to get executive support is to get the “buy-in” of the entire company. Without everyone in the organization fully understanding that this initiative has top management support and is truly a company-wide initiative, individual departments or work groups will continue to use their own “ad hoc” methods of onboarding staff. new.

Also keep in mind that it’s 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 communicated clearly and unequivocally 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 endorsing the project and describing its benefits. Maybe consider an official launch party and invite everyone.

Program objectives must also be clearly communicated to everyone in the organization and be in alignment with the organization’s objectives. The objectives of any project that your organization is willing to pay for must be aligned with the needs of the organization. There must be a clear business reason for spending time and money developing an effective New Employee Orientation Program. If one of the company’s 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 is designed for the most frequently hired level of employee. But your new hire training program must also be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of your organization. You don’t need a whole new program for every level of employee you join. By building your program for the most common cases using easily customizable components, reinvention of the wheel is minimized and therefore lowers 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. Times listed are for guidelines only and will likely vary across organizations and depending on whether the program is delivered in a group meeting, online, one-on-one, or a combination. The point here is to start developing the plan well before your new hire’s first day.

Also note that the tasks listed in the first eight months are for program development. Once you have implemented the schedule, only the 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 newly 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 to “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 address?”
• Determine the specific learning objectives that the orientation program must meet. What does the new hire 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 solicit their support.
• Interview employees with one to two years of experience. What was your experience as a new employee? Remember to take advantage of your organization’s existing customer research methods.
• Carry out a Target Audience Analysis (TAA). A TAA gives you enough relevant information to design an effective targeting program and identify the most common audience characteristics and highlight how many (if any) custom modules you will need to create.
• Review exit interviews of employees who left within a year of being hired and identify what could have been done differently during orientation to improve retention. Determining why the 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-trained enough to perform as required, then be sure to incorporate a comprehensive on-the-job training component into your New Employee 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 departments. Classroom book, technical equipment and other training aids.
• Create a detailed plan for the new employee’s first day.
• Create activities for both counseling 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.) keeping in mind 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 family of the new employee. 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 an employee handbook or workbook. Prepare audiovisual and visual scripts, etc.
• Identify the best presenters for the in-person content portions.
• Prepare presenter’s materials.
• Review the learning objectives and delivery methods with the presenters.

THREE TO FOUR MONTHS Before the launch of the program

• Decide how you will evaluate the new orientation process to ensure that the program has achieved the stated goals.

ONE TO TWO MONTHS Before program launch

• Run a beta teaching of the new program with newly hired employees who did not receive orientation.
• Make the necessary adjustments.
• Recognize advisory board/task force members for their efforts.
• Train New Employee Orientation facilitators and supervisors.

TWO WEEKS Before the new employee arrives

• Arrange for computer/software and phone installation.
• 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 name 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 employees.
• Send an internal memo to coworkers announcing the new employee’s name, position, date of arrival, 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 isn’t really a quick or overnight solution to your employee retention and engagement challenges, but following these checklists and a clear customer 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.