11. Orientation

Welcome Aboard!

The good news is that you’ve just hired a terrific person for that open position. The bad news is that there’s a good chance your new employee might not work out. In fact, according to a study by the training company Leadership IQ, only 19% of new hires achieve unequivocal success within their first 18 months on the job.

What can you do to increase your odds? Build an effective orientation process and program. Traditionally, HR managers focus on the orientation session, which we define as the formal event that employees attend (either in person or virtually) to learn essential information about the company.

But, although that program is vitally important, it’s not enough to ensure that new employees are set up for success. For that, you need to develop a more holistic orientation process that is well understood by managers and employees. (Some companies call this process “onboarding,” as in “getting the new hire on board.”)

This process is critical because orientation isn’t a one-day experience; it occurs over time, beginning when a person is hired and ending when that person is completely performing the job he or she was hired to do:

• For some positions, the process of orientation may take less than a day, because the new hire can begin performing his or her job duties successfully right from the start.

• For more senior-level employees with specific expertise or experience, the process can take much longer (six months to a year, for example) and requires a bit more effort (but it’s more than worth the effort, we must add).

In this chapter, we focus on the communication components of orientation: briefing managers, building an orientation process, and holding an orientation session.

Before You Begin

We’ve spent a lot of time listening to employees over the years—both those who just started at their companies, and those who have been around a while. That’s how we know that new employees in particular want answers to a universal set of questions. If you keep these questions in mind when designing your orientation process, you’ll give employees the answers they seek:

• What business is our company in, and how do we stack up against the competition?

• What’s our company history?

• What is our company mission (why we exist) and vision (where we’re headed)?

• Who’s in charge? What’s our current business structure, and who are the people on our management team?

• Why should I care about all these points? What’s in it for me?

• How can I succeed here?

Like every communication project, creating an effective orientation program starts with research. We’ve found that the best research for this purpose is qualitative, which means conducting an open-ended dialog with people. Here are some techniques you might try:

• Ask HR professionals from various businesses or locations in your company what information new hires need to succeed.

• Find out some of the reasons people gave in exit interviews for leaving the company within the first year.

• Conduct a focus group with successful people in your company to find out which experiences and information helped them most when they were new to the firm.

• Interview senior managers and find out what they want every new person to know about the company and how it’s important to the company’s success.

• Talk with representatives of key functions (Marketing, IT, Legal, for example) to find out what they want new hires to know about their area.

Based on your research, set goals for your process and program, and then develop content and delivery and determine how you’ll get feedback.

“My First Week”

As you explore improving your orientation process, here’s a great question to ask: “What do you remember most about your first day or week?” Alison’s firm recently asked this of a team of employees on an onboarding project and heard the good, bad, and ugly of their orientation experiences. Here is some of what they told us:

• “I didn’t get my computer on the first day, so I couldn’t really do any work.”

• “My cubicle was completely ready for me: computer, office supplies, working phone, etc. That made me feel as if my department wanted me to be there.”

• “My manager arranged meetings with key people during my first two weeks on the job. Those meetings were so valuable for getting up to speed and building relationships with people who would be critical to my success.”

• “I was brought into a conference room and given a stack of HR documents to read, and forms to sign. I thought, ‘I’ll never absorb all this, so I’ll have to ask my colleagues questions later.’”

• “I had moved between the time I accepted the job and my first day at work, so I needed to fill out a change-of-address online form for payroll. It took me two hours to find the form and figure out how to fill it out.”

• “I had a welcoming committee! The whole team greeted me at the front door and took me to my office. At lunchtime, my boss ordered pizza for everyone. By the end of the day, I felt like I knew my coworkers pretty well.”

Set Up Managers for Success

If yours is like most organizations, your research will reveal that the single most important person in the orientation process is the new employee’s manager. Even if your company has a well-integrated onboarding system in place—involving HR, facilities, IT, and other functions—the manager is the glue that holds it all together. For example, the manager does the following:

• Works with other groups to make sure the new employee receives the basics: a space in which to work, a phone, a computer, a company ID, and so on.

• Helps the employee understand what he can expect of the company and what the company expects of him.

• Introduces the new hire to the people inside and outside the department that he will work with. (Because of the collaborative nature of most work, it’s important that the new hire begin meeting with the people who will be important to his or her success starting on the first day.)

• Sends an e-mail to colleagues the new hire will be working with that gives an overview of the new hire’s work experience, skills, and expertise—and perhaps a fun fact or two. The idea is to give new colleagues some conversation starters as they meet the new hire.

• Provides meaningful work that the employee can do right away and gives feedback so that the work gets done properly.

• Sets goals and provides coaching to help the new employee succeed.

Your job is to make it easy for the manager to provide an effective orientation. This starts with articulating the manager’s role. Don’t assume that just because the manager participated in recruiting, he will understand what’s expected of him as soon as the new employee starts the job.

Translate the Manager’s Role into Action

When we refer to defining a manager’s role, we don’t mean creating a long, detailed document with lots of bullet points. Managers are action-oriented. Their big question is, “What do I need to do?” (They very seldom ask the existential Hamlet question, “To be, or not to be?”) So, as we heard at the industrial company, managers want a “playbook”—a guide to the steps involved in orienting a new employee—with the supporting tools and information that will help them take those steps.

We find that, since managers live by their calendar, the best way to provide this information is within a timeline. After all, the process of orientation starts on the first day and ends when the new employee is fully performing on the job. So managers need to know what must happen when.

The timeline should cover the entire orientation process and describe all the things that need to happen during that process.

Figure 11-1 is a partial example of what you might include.

Figure 11-1 Manager’s timeline for employee orientation

That Special Day: The Orientation Program

An orientation program is hardly a new concept. After all, for almost as long as companies have existed, HR departments have been inviting new employees to spend a day (or more) learning about the organization and its products or services, meeting senior leaders, and finding out “how we do things here.”

But just because orientation programs have been around a while doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make them more effective. Here are five ways smart companies are breathing new energy into orientation programs:

• Have a clear idea (yes, an objective) of what you need the orientation program to accomplish. Is the emphasis on company knowledge? Engaging new employees in the culture (which can be defined as how we work together)? Understanding how their job fits into the strategy? Decide on a few focus areas, and handle other activities differently.

• Don’t treat the orientation program as a catchall for everything a new employee needs to know or do. The new employee has to fill out forms, for example, but that activity can be handled another time—even before the first day of work.

• Give new employees a chance to interact with each other. If you want to break down the silos that insulate some business units from others and give people a chance to get to know one another, you might schedule a couple of orientation programs a year and bring together employees from different geographies. If it’s more important to get employees up to speed quickly, you may hold more frequent orientation programs in different locations. In either case, make sure you include “getting to know you” time in your agenda. Building good relationships with colleagues right from the start is an important step toward success for both the new employee and the company.

• Think about the advantages and disadvantages of “going virtual.” After all, with today’s online learning and web/videoconferencing meetings, you don’t need a physical orientation program to cover some of what new employees need to know. So you may choose to make part of your orientation program a virtual experience. While it may be tempting to create an orientation section on your website and check off “orientation process” from your to-do list, please don’t. Some of the most important advice a new hire receives will come from personal conversations, not by clicking one link after another. Again, research will help you determine what information will work best online and which needs to be in person.

• Break open the traditional boring agenda. If new employees have to sit still in their seats all day, listening to people lecture and watching PowerPoint, they won’t be jazzed about your organization. You’ve made a big investment in hiring these new employees and bringing them together. An orientation session shouldn’t be a passive activity; it should be a motivating, participative experience.

A New Format for Your Orientation Program

How do you break the bounds of PowerPoint? Begin with the premise that you are there to engage employees in learning about a few key topics, not to cram information into their heads the way you stuff a Thanksgiving turkey! (By the way, we prefer cornbread with sausage.)

You can’t eliminate presentations; after all, they are a proven way to share information. But you can make the program more interactive and energetic by designing sessions that involve participants and let them explore as well as listen:

Fun Facts

When Jane hosted an orientation program one year, she started the day by giving the audience some positive feedback—a technique you might find helpful in your next orientation program. She said:

“To give you an idea of how special you are, I’d like to share with you a few statistics about our recruiting process. Each year, we interview at 62 colleges in the U.S. Each year, the management recruiting office here in New York receives more than 15,000 resumes from people who want the jobs you have. Typically, we interview 14 people for every one person who’s hired. By the end of this year, we’ll hire 1,300 new professionals worldwide—900 of those in the U.S. And we’ll hire 600 management associates worldwide—300 of those in the U.S. More than 50% of the new management associates and professionals we hire have graduate degrees.”

Positive Feedback for NEO

What do new employees think of the ZS orientation program? Feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Here’s a sampling:

• “It was inspiring to have the opportunity to hear one of the cofounders speak. The presentation helped put the company’s background and goals as well as my role at ZS into perspective. I’m glad Andy and Prabha are presenters in the first days of NEO. It’s important to have their presence at this event as a first impression.”

• “This was very thought-provoking and did more to give me a positive perception of ZS culture than anything else I’ve seen thus far.”

• “The exercises were helpful in practicing—the session was very interactive, kept our attention, and helped me understand how ZS expects the project process to occur.”

• “The mock project was helpful because we actually got to work with our tools. I felt much more comfortable going into my first day of work.”

• “The session about the four main project areas and the associate’s role helped answer a lot of questions.”

• “Very good session; got me excited about ZS.”

NEO is obviously a big investment, but it’s proven its value, says Griese. “It’s important to get employees up to speed as quickly as possible and to make sure they’re heading in the right direction,” he explains. “NEO is obviously just the beginning of the journey—our managers spend a lot of their time nurturing their people—but we’ve found that a great start leads to faster and higher impact with our clients.”

Checklist for Giving New Employees What They Need to Be Successful

Think about what new employees need to know about your company, its products or services, its history, and other essential topics.

Ask key stakeholders—including senior leaders, managers, and current employees—what would make a new hire’s orientation experience meaningful.

Make sure managers understand their role in orientation.

Give managers a checklist or “playbook” for what they need to do, with background material and resources to draw on.

Have a clear idea of what your orientation program needs to focus on—and what you’ll share with new employees through other channels.

Think outside the PowerPoint, creating a format for an orientation program that actively involves employees.