New Employee Orientation

Introduction

New staff orientation is an activity performed by most companies as a means to acclimate their new hires, but can often be done poorly.  While the purpose of orientation is to introduce the worker to their new environment and bring them up to speed on company policies, procedures, and the general “how it’s done around here,” all too often the orientation results in either information overload or the glossing over of seemingly insignificant but crucial details.  Experts remark that an improperly conducted orientation or even a lack of orientation at all can lead to anxiety and high turnover in staff who are essentially left to sink or swim in their brand new environment.

Dr. Judith Brown writes in her article Employee Orientation: Keeping New Employees on Board that orientation shouldn’t be just something that a company does as a courtesy (Brown, 2007).  New hires cannot be reasonably expected to just pick up on the nuances of how an organization operates while on the job, despite being hired for their skillset, experience, knowledge, and abilities.  What is missing in that circumstance is the employee’s feeling of belonging, like they’re not just an accepted and crucial part of the culture but that they’re included and valued as a person and contributor to the organization’s goals…IF they know what those goals are, first of all!  Thus, merely handing the new employee a brochure or even a folder full of policies, procedures, descriptive documents, and forms isn’t enough.

When an employee is made to feel comfortable and part of the team, the employee is more apt to be able to learn his or her new job.  If the new hire is fretting about guessing what is considered acceptable or unacceptable behavior, that is less time and energy devoted to learning the job.  Research in organizational behavior shows that the higher the motivation and job satisfaction of an employee, the greater their productivity.  Job satisfaction can be an even greater motivator than just pay scale or title prestige  (Kimball & Nink, 2006).

Benefits of Orientation

Brown cites a number of reasons that a proper and appropriate orientation can be beneficial to both the employee and the company:

• Reduction of start-up cost.  When an employee is tossed into the wild to fend for him- or herself, armed with little more than the Employee Handbook, the employee has to learn both the job for which he or she was hired as well as learning how to get along with coworkers, expectations, and rules of the workplace.  Newcomers experience the highest amount of stress in acclimating to the new environment immediately, though that tends to decrease in the following days (Wanous and Reichers, 2000).
• Reduction of anxiety.  Related to the above, a newcomer to an organization feels like an outsider at first, obviously.  That feeling of isolation or exclusion can hamper the employee’s ability to focus and concentrate on the work at hand.  A proper orientation process can help reduce or eliminate some of the worries and concerns of the new employee.
• Reduction of employee turnover.  When a new employee feels like an outsider who doesn’t really belong, and that feeling persists weeks or months after hire, productivity suffers.  The concept of a psychological contract – a set of beliefs that an individual has regarding promises made or agreed upon between him- or herself and a coworker, supervisor, or the organization itself – is an important aspect in assimilating the employee into the organization’s culture, nurtured through a sense of belonging and inclusion.  A lack of orientation, or a poorly conducted one, can fail to convey that message to the employee, that they are a valued contributor and member of the organization.  That disconnect leads to the employee wondering “why am I even here?” (Wanous and Reichers, 2000)
• Reduction of remedial training.  Elementary concepts such as safety protocols, conditions of employment, history of the company, and even vacation and sick-day policies can all be addressed during orientation, rather than taking a supervisor’s and the employee’s time away from learning the job and how relevant business groups operate.  In Brown’s words, “the better the initial orientation, the less likely supervisors and coworkers will have to spend time teaching the employee.”
• Increasing realistic job expectations and motivation.  The more quickly an employee can assimilate to the working culture and job responsibilities, the more productive that employee can be.  Through proper orientation that includes realistic job previews, what is expected of them and others around them, and how they fit into the greater workings of the organization.

The benefits of a well-planned and executed employee orientation are clear.  Without it, new employees can find themselves floundering and struggling with a steep learning curve.  They struggle with not just learning and getting comfortable with their job tasks, but with learning the methods and procedures of the organization.  They struggle to figure out where and how they fit into the organization, and wonder whether they’re even valued as individuals and workers.

Conflicts such as these inevitably lead to decreased motivation and low engagement with the company.  Interestingly enough, such negativity has been shown to actually increase the overall cost of an employee, when considering the lost productivity as well as the tolls of physical, mental, and emotional declines that can result from a negative outlook. (Kimball and Nink, 2006)

What to Include in an Orientation Plan

Brown lists many suggestions to incorporate into an orientation program.  Significantly, her recommendation includes beginning before the employee even starts at the company.  By answering a few key questions, an effective plan can be devised.  Questions such as:

• What do new empoyees need to know about their work environment to make them more comfortable?
• What impression should the employee leave with on their first day?
• What important policies and procedures should the employee know right away on the first day?
• How can the company help the employee’s supervisor in acclimating the employee to their new environment?

Armed with the answers to these questions, an effective orientation program will include relevant information while understanding that not everything has to be conveyed to the employee in the span of a few hours.  Orientation can in fact begin before the new employee even arrives at the company on the first day of work, by providing some key information ahead of time so that the employee has a reasonable expectation when walking in the door for the first day.  Brown suggests that the company be open and communicative with the employee to assuage any fears or anxieties as quickly as possible.  It is also suggested to refrain from the less relevant portions of the dry and stuffy elements of company policies and employee handbooks, as such information can be gleaned at a later date, once the employee has been assimilated into the organization.

Summary

An effective orientation program focuses not just on the factual information about the company, but acknowledgment that the newcomer is indeed walking into a new and unfamiliar environment.  Steps should be taken to ease that transition from a higher overview level, outside of the specific ordered tasks of a job.  While the up-front costs of taking the time to communicate and prepare the new hire even before his or her official start date, as well as easing the new hire into the job, may not seem cost effective right away, but the long-term benefits of a more motivated and satisfied worker who ultimately needed less time and effort to acclimate to the new environment will vastly outweigh those short-term costs.

References

Brown, J. (2007, February). Employee Orientation: Keeping New Employees on Board. IPMA-HR.

Kimball, L. S., & Nink, C. E. (2006). How to Improve Employee Motivation, Commitment, Productivity, Well-Being and Safety.

Wanous, J. P., & Reichers, A. E. (2000). New Employee Orientation Programs. Human Resource Management Review, 435-451.