You’ve done everything right in attracting, screening, and finally hiring the person for the open job. A starting date has been set and at last, the new employee reports to work. What you do those first few days might determine whether that person becomes a loyal, dedicated, enthusiastic staff member or a halfhearted worker already on the way to disillusionment and potential problems.

In this chapter we’ll look at some steps organizations can take to minimize the trauma faced by an employee in those critical first weeks on the job.

Let’s look at this from the viewpoint of the new employee. Starting a new job is both exciting and scary. The new person doesn’t know what to expect. During the period of interviews and pre-employment discussions, the employee developed some impressions and expectations—now comes the reality check. Does the job live up to what was expected?

When the company hired Ken, he was told the job would involve creative approaches to the work, but from day one, he was told not to deviate from what the manual specified. When Dorothy was interviewed, she was given the impression that the company believed strongly in employee participation in making decisions affecting the work. After she was hired, she found that her boss usually ignored suggestions from employees.

In many cases these problems are due to poor leadership by the immediate supervisors. However, often the problems can be alleviated if the new workers are properly oriented to fully understand the company’s policies, the true nature of their jobs, and what they might expect over time.

Orientation programs help new employees get a better start on the job by making them feel that they are part of the group from the beginning. Most companies have some type of orientation program for new employees. The human resources department usually conducts these on the day the new employee reports to work, before they are sent to the department in which they will work.

Employees might be shown videos, be given a tour of the facilities, receive literature, or attend a lecture. They learn the history of the organization, the benefits are explained, and the rules and regulations are outlined. This is a good start—but not enough. The team leader or supervisor must augment this with an orientation to the team or department. This should include a discussion of the nature of the specific job and details of how the supervisor plans to train and assist the employee in becoming productive.

Lack of adequate orientation is one reason employees quit during the first few months of starting a job. Often, new employees are just thrust into the job without really feeling welcomed. They might have only a vague concept of the company’s culture, mission, and goals. They just don’t feel that they “belong.”

As the manager of the department or leader of the team, you are a key person in making the new employee feel part of the team. Here are some things you can do to make him or her feel welcome:

A relatively new approach companies are using is known as on-boarding. This process supplements traditional orientation programs and makes them more effective. Originally, on-boarding was designed to rapidly and thoroughly bring newly hired executives into the mainstream. Now it is being extended to technical, professional, and administrative personnel and in some companies, to all new hires. Let’s look at how a successful on-boarding process works.

The single most important aspect of successful on-boarding is the development of a comprehensive plan to shepherd the new employee through the first several months. Companies that successfully transition new employees into happy, productive, well-integrated members of the culture take the time to think through the key goals and objectives for the first year. They prepare a written set of guidelines for the orientation process to avoid any misunderstanding and to gauge progress.

Indicating a clear sense of what your organization is trying to accomplish is very important to the on-boarding effort, and serves as insurance against some future misunderstanding. In many cases, the purpose statement is no more than a sentence or two. However, the objective is always the same: to clarify the reason a successful on-boarding effort is important to the company and the new employee. Rather than using a boilerplate plan for all new employees, the most effective on-boarding plans are tailored to the special needs of the new employee and the organization.

Every company culture has positive and negative qualities, and every new employee is likely to experience both. The best, most successful on-boarding plans carefully evaluate both the forces that tend to work in favor of a new employee (or increase the likelihood of a successful introduction) and those that work against it. Being sure of which is which and to what extent they operate can contribute to success or failure as much as anything else.

When a company hires a new employee, it is most likely to emphasize all of the positive points about the job and the company and to either hide or minimize the negatives. New employees will find out those negatives—often during the first days or weeks on the job—and this can affect their attitudes toward the company. To avoid this, any negatives should be brought up before the final offer is made, while pointing out that the positives of the job far outweigh the negatives. This will prevent potential disillusionment.

Often, new employees have a misconception of the true nature of a situation when they move into a new job. For example, Jason expected to take over an ongoing collections program that “needed a little sharpening up.” When he started the job, he found that the system was in shambles and collections were well behind schedule. Had he been given the true picture, he would have been far better prepared for the work he had to do.

All aspects of a job are not equal—some are far more important than others. Too often companies fail to understand that most failure on the job can be traced to the inadequate accomplishment of just a handful of objectives. However, if these objectives are identified and a plan is prepared to help ensure that they’re accomplished, the probability of success increases dramatically.

Dr. Raymond Harrison, a management consultant, asserts that every new job has at least two or three critical few objectives. These are the handful of objectives that must be achieved if the new employee is to succeed. It’s essential to identify and clarify, in the first 90 days of employment, these three or four (seldom more) objectives. They mean so much that even if a new person does a hundred other things superbly and these few things poorly, the result will be a failure.

Once the critical few objectives have been identified, good on-boarding plans also specify a series of key goals and the dates by which they’ll be achieved. These are very specific, quantifiable goals, with clearly indicated timetables; for example, short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals.

Another major step in successfully on-boarding a new employee is selecting and recruiting a mentor. Obviously, it’s important that this person be intimately familiar with the internal workings of the firm, including the key political players and the informal—leaders—the people in every organization, who may not have a title or official position, but have considerable influence among the employees.

Mentors provide important advice for new employees on a range of topics. A mentor’s overall mission is to “pave the way” for the new person, introduce him or her to the right people, and run interference should the going get tough.

The most valuable qualities and characteristics of a good mentor include the following:

Mentors are not only useful in the on-boarding process; with proper support, they can be valuable aids in training and motivating employees, and dealing with on-the-job problems. Because the on-boarding process is so important to the longer-range success and assimilation of the new employee, the mentor should always be someone with both a thorough knowledge of the organization and a good measure of clout. Partnering with this type of person also sends a signal to the rest of the organization that the new hire is important, worthy of the personal attention of one of the company’s heavy-hitters, and not to be taken lightly.

Mentoring is serious business and, according to recent research, often can be the most important difference between the successful retention of a new employee and a decision to leave. When done well, it provides not only a platform for the ready and enthusiastic acceptance of a new hire, but also a much-needed reference guide to the dangers and subtleties of the organizational culture.

One of the biggest problems new employees face in assimilating with the culture of a new company is a lack of initial focus. One method that helps new hires get off on the right foot is to help them achieve some significant successes during the first couple of weeks on the job. As the old saying goes “nothing succeeds more than success.”

Let’s see how this worked in one company. As part of the on-boarding process for Ben, an assistant marketing manager, he was given an assignment to study the possibility of using e-marketing outlets for the company’s products. As Ben had worked with e-markets in his previous job, he had a good deal of knowledge in this area. By enabling him to use his expertise immediately, the company gave him the opportunity to demonstrate his value to the organization early on. This not only was a benefit to the company, but also made Ben feel a part of a winning team from the beginning. It also enabled his colleagues and teammates to observe their new team member at his very best—ensuring his acceptance by the group.

When outsiders are hired for higher-level jobs, it’s not uncommon for jealousy or resentment of the new hire to occur within the team. Current employees might feel they were unfairly “overlooked” for the job. In some cases, it might lead to flagrant attempts to undermine the new person through whispering campaigns, unjustified criticisms, rumor mongering, and subtle refusals to cooperate. Of course all of these things can lead to diminished morale in the department and perhaps the company itself.

Here are some ways to keep these issues from coming up:

When companies make the effort to be frank with employees about their opportunities for advancement, it is much more likely that they will understand and accept your hiring decisions.

There is little question that the single most valuable contribution company executives can make to the assimilation of a new hire is unwavering support. Too many organizations underestimate the importance of this. As a result they encourage—however unintentionally—resentment from the new employee to their decision.

There is no surer way to ensure the failure of a new hire than to make a decision on that person’s value or effectiveness in the first few months. Worse yet is allowing the person to be put “on trial” by co-workers. The results of practices like this are almost always negative and destructive. They remain a leading cause of failed assimilations, and the early exit of those who otherwise might have made important contributions. Obviously, it’s the job of those with authority to be sure things like this simply don’t happen.

A good example of this is giving the new employee a “baptism of fire.” This happened to Carlos on the first day on his new job as a systems engineer. He was given a tough, major assignment that required him to work day and night for a week to identify the problems and come up with solutions. When he complained to his boss, the response was, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Carlos quit. When the human resources manager asked his boss why Carlos left so soon, he was told, “I give the new guys tough problems to solve, so I can test their mettle. He didn’t make it.” This doesn’t really make sense. Had Carlos been properly broken in; given a thorough orientation and an initial assignment he could readily accomplish, he most likely would have developed into a highly productive employee.

Many executives don’t recognize the importance of a good orientation, and often pay little attention to how new employees are treated during those first critical days on the job. They not only ignore good on-boarding procedures, but use approaches that are self defeating. Let’s look at some of these.

Delegating the orientation of new hires to clerical and administrative employees can give the wrong impression. This is particularly true when the new employee is at the management, higher technical, or specialized levels. Allowing people well below the level of the new employee to be responsible for the orientation sends a signal that senior management doesn’t value the assimilation of new employees enough.

Please don’t misunderstand: It’s not at all uncommon for members of the clerical or administrative team to play a very important role in the success or failure of a new hire. Often they know more—even much more—about the real inner workings and culture of the company than the heavy-hitters. That said, it’s also important to remember that the perception of unconditional support from senior-most management is the single most important determiner of a successful assimilation. Without it, the orientation is much more difficult.

Some managers over-delegate because they believe that remaining detached from the day-to-day details is the best way to encourage leadership and a “take charge” attitude among workers. Although that might be true in some cases, it does appear that managers of this type have more difficulty retaining outstanding workers than those with a more involved management style. One of the reasons for this evidently is the increased likelihood that new hires will come to feel “abandoned” or “tossed to the wolves” by their perhaps well-intentioned but still ill-advised managers.

To get the best results in managing, carefully balance a hands-off style, in which you expect people to work independently with micromanagement, in which the manager makes all the decisions. Find the happy medium.

This doesn’t mean that the boss should microman-age the new employee, but he or she also shouldn’t tell the person, “Here’s what I expect of you—go do it” with no other guidelines. Even highly experienced and self-confident new employees need guidance when starting in a new position. They don’t know the culture, history, working style, or inner soul of the company; the varying personality quirks of co-workers; or the management philosophy of their new bosses. It’s worth the time and effort it takes to provide new hires with a set of guidelines on all of these facets and to work closely with them over the first weeks and months to monitor their progress.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, in a desire to cut costs, many managers have overly downsized their organizations. This often has resulted in workers who survived the layoffs working longer and harder. When business picked up in the late 1990s, these same companies began to rebuild their workforces. However, due to the emphasis placed on maintaining a favorable bottom line, they often had lofty expectations of their new hires. To get them productive as soon as possible, on-boardings were minimized, often lasting less than a day before they expected the new hire to start “pitching in” and demonstrating his or her value. The results of this practice—asking too much too soon from a new hire are almost always negative—and almost always increase the likelihood of an early exit.

Few things contribute more to the loss of good people—and sometimes to expensive lawsuits—than evidence of dishonesty or deceptive business practices in the upper reaches of an organization. With increasing regularity this includes deceptive hiring practices. No doubt this has been driven largely by extremely low unemployment rates in the United States and elsewhere.

According to a survey of new hires by Dr. Frank Ashby, President of Leadership Capital Group, HR consultants, a surprising 50 percent said they felt misled or intentionally deceived by some aspect of their interviewing process. Among new hires who left their new companies within 60 days, claims of deceptive or misleading hiring practices were reported by nearly 80 percent. Among the most common were misrepresentations about the nature of the job. At one company, applicants were told that there would be “occasional overtime.” After they were on the job, they found they were expected to work many hours overtime and, as exempt employees, were not compensated for this.

Another company boasted about its “generous” health insurance plan, only to offer an HMO that had a reputation for denying benefits for trivial reasons. Other frequent complaints were that special training that was promised was never given, salary readjustments that had been promised were not made, and “moderate travel” turned into long assignments away from home.