Talent Retention and Employee Orientation
By Irving H. Buchen, Ph.D.

Exit interviews often do not include questions about how employees started, but only what led to their departure. Adding such questions about beginnings to exit interviews often reveals an unexpected linkage between start and end. Indeed, one of the routine disasters most companies inadvertently create often occurs on an employee’s first day, during new-hire orientation. Here is a quick catalog of some of the orientation blunders and tactics that surface during exit interviews:

• Intimidate Them: “We are distributing a policy book and manual. We call it the bible. It totals 639 pages. We will go through it, page by page.”
• Control Them: “We take the organizational chart seriously around here. It documents the chain of command, from which there is to be no deviation. Here, everyone knows their place.”
• Dazzle Them: “We believe in being cheerleaders. We live breathe, eat and sleep the company’s success. You will too.”
• Amuse Them: “We will show you episodes from ‘Wings,’ ‘Frazier’—from a lot of sitcoms that deal hilariously with starting out on a new job. You are going to have a great time.”
• Impress Them: “We are a company of winners. Unfortunately, none of our stars is available for the orientation.”

Orientation is often an afterthought. All the real effort has been put into advertising the position, crafting the job description, working with headhunters, conducting multiple interviews, doing the reference checks, etc. Frequently, these tasks are handled not by the senior-level leaders of the company who have a strong commitment to overall culture, mission and vision. Rather, they are conducted by supervisors at a lower level who are concerned primarily with how this new person will fit in and whether or not he can contribute significantly to the specific work he needs to do. So orientation ends up being a poor second to the hiring process.

Superficial or token introductions can lead to a series of negative conclusions. The new employee may believe that she might have made a mistake accepting this job in the first place. She may take herself to task for failing to ask the right questions during the interview. Worse of all, she may conclude that she was not told the truth at the outset, and begin to become distrustful.

At a bare minimum, orientation should be perceived as the way to keep what it costs you a great deal to get—in short, as the first step in talent retention. The 10 principles outlined here help guide the development and evaluation of orientation programs. The practices are both basic and ambitious, easy to install but hard to coordinate, requiring a lot of work and planning, and contingent on a great deal of cooperative involvement with many others, including those who are somewhat distant from the job position and division. Although often difficult to obtain, such a range of participation offers a miniature of the big picture, critical to retention. Ironically, however, negotiating turf allegiances so as to bring about an honest review and revision of orientation programs is often easier to accomplish when undertaken by outsiders.

Principle 1: Seamless Bridge
Everything has to be of a piece. What is said in the job posting? What is described in the job description? What information about the company is conveyed in the interviews? All of this has to match what the employee hears at the orientation and what he hears his supervisor say when he joins his department. In other words, orientation starts with the first interview. Discrepancies invite suspicion and possible lawsuits.

Principle 2: Miniature of the Whole
Opportunities to sample the organization in miniature, talk across divisional lines and meet people one ordinarily would not encounter are usually lost, because either the prospect of such interaction is not valued or a cross-section of relevant personnel is too troublesome to assemble.

Principle 3: One-Shot Chore?
Follow-up and debriefing are standard practices when conducting business. Why should orientation be a one-shot affair? Why should everything be crowded in one day or the first week, overloading new employees, when follow-ups could be scheduled?

Principle 4: Vision, Mission and Information
How much does the organization want its new people to know? The answer is what it would also want its customers to know.

Principle 5: Students of the Business
New employees should be encouraged to become students of the business and of the field, especially if there are stock options. This is the time to present the big, big picture—industry-wide.

Principle 6: Identify the Challenges
What drives what your organization does now? Cost because of competition? Quality because of customer complaints? Morale because it affects everything? Innovation because that is what will set the business apart? Continuous improvement because the workforce must constantly exceed its aims and reach stretch goals?

Principle 7: The Future
What are the critical trends that might impact the company, the new hire’s specific job and the industry in general? Have HR show changes in job descriptions and in the nature of workshops over the past 10 years. What are the short- and long-range targets and forecasts?

Principle 8: Communication
Communication can save or break an organization. How many organizations have rumor mills that are stronger than all memos and newsletters combined? How many organizations regularly have three meetings: the original meeting, the next one around the water cooler, and the third on the phone at night? Communication has to be elevated to become part of the organizational culture. It is the glue that holds everything and everyone together.

Principle 9: Instructional Design
Orientation programs should be memorable, but few are. They also should be interesting. Minimally, supervisors of new employees should be part of the design team so that they know what to follow up with what. In short, orientations should be perceived as the first training workshop.

Principle 10: Performance Review and Improvement
Performance appraisal should not be perfunctory, punitive, prejudiced or solely retrospective. The capacity of performance improvement to affect productivity, profitability, competitive edge, customer quality and even innovation needs to be discussed. Performance is the key to the organization’s success. But don’t just say it. Prove it. Show correlations between performance improvement, training and company gains. Identify innovations that have been generated by employees and what savings and earnings they resulted in. Always talk and walk ROI.

Summary
Orientation should neither be boastful nor intimidating. It should be a sample of the whole. Above all, it should be interesting. Minimally, it should be as engaging as the work that is to follow and the reasons for accepting the job in the first place. To be sure, companies rightly seek to put their best foot forward, but truth-telling—not hype—should govern. Orientation is not the time to engage in elaborate justifications or claims of superiority. Waving the flag should be replaced by a fascinating examination of company problem-solving. Why was the company structured this way? Why was this brand of information technology selected? What correlations exist between training and productivity? Etc. And finally, what challenges remain? Above all, like training itself, orientation has to be perceived as a leadership position. It should undergird, enhance and strengthen the commitment of top management to make their success and that of their employees—especially new ones—one and the same.

Reprinted from  Workforce Performance Solutions Magazine,

Mediatec Publishing

Irving H. Buchen, Ph.D., is director of international programs for IMPAC University, doctoral business faculty for Cappella University and senior research associate of Canis Learning Systems.