The more new staff members know or can learn about the target population before they start work, the less likely they are to make costly mistakes. Unless she lives in the community in which she'll be working, a new staff member needs to know a number of things about it. It may mean the town in which the organization is located. But it can also mean an urban neighborhood, a rural area that encompasses several towns or villages, a particular cultural or social group, a housing project It is the community as your organization interprets it that you should be considering here.
The size, diversity and what groups constitute that diversity , average income, average education level, etc. Types of business and industry, major employers, types of housing, nature of different areas "wealthy" vs. In general, what's the community's socio-economic status? What are the schools like? How much crime is there? What issues do people care about? Who do elected officials tend to be? Is the community largely liberal, largely conservative, or somewhere in between?
Is it socially tolerant? Do people from different groups mix, or do they stay separate, even if relations among them are good? What do the power structure and the governing bodies look like - and are they the same? What are the important institutions in the community hospitals, banks, major businesses, etc. What are the faith communities? How powerful are the various media, and what are their biases? You may have had the experience of starting a new job with very little knowledge of the job itself, and with the expectation that you'd simply figure out what it was you were supposed to do.
If so, you understand clearly why new staff members need more than that if they're going to be effective. Some basic information would include:. Compensatory time, or comp time, is time taken off from work to make up for unpaid overtime. Many organizations can't afford to pay for overtime, but do offer comp time.
Actually conducting a staff orientation, in addition to planning out the topics to be covered, takes some consideration of a number of issues. First, however, you need to think through what the orientation is really meant to do.
Decide at whom your orientation is aimed. Are you going to orient everyone in the organization, or only some people? Will there be different orientations for different positions? Once you're clear on your audience, the rest will follow logically. Is it a group or individual orientation? If you're a new organization, or if you've just gotten a new pot of money, you may be hiring several people at once. A group orientation offers some advantages over an individual one: new staff members can discuss issues among themselves, some may ask important questions that others in the group wouldn't have thought about, and you can plan group activities - role plays, for instance - that might help people understand their jobs and the organization better.
Another advantage of a group is that the focus of the orientation is less likely to get lost in the day-to-day work of the organization if there's a group to consider. All of this raises the question of whether you should wait until you have a group of new and relatively new employees before you conduct an orientation. Despite the advantages of a group orientation, putting off an orientation is usually a bad idea. The new staff member needs the support and knowledge at the beginning.
By the time you get around to it, she may have already learned much of what she needs to know. She may also be frustrated that she had to do it on her own, and had to endure the stress of not understanding the organization, and not knowing what she was supposed to do. By waiting, you'll have lost the point of the orientation. Clarify what you want to accomplish.
Is the orientation meant simply to introduce the new staff member to others in the organization, or do you hope that it will equip her to start right in on her job? What are your goals here? Answering that question will help you reach your next decision. Decide on the content of the orientation. Knowing whom you're orienting and to what purpose should give you the basis for determining how much of the content laid out above you want to include.
Will you go through the personnel policies? Will you take the new staff member to visit other sites or other organizations? Are there observations or activities that need to be included? Start by laying out the specific content areas that need to be covered. Then, for each of them, you may be able to see what would be the best format and method to cover that area, and who would be the best person to present it. Decide whether the orientation will be group or individual.
To some extent, this will be determined for you by your situation. If you've just hired one new staff member and you're not planning to hire others in the foreseeable future, then an individual orientation is in the cards. If you're new or are overhauling your organization, you may be hiring several people at once, and a group orientation probably makes more sense.
If you're constantly recruiting volunteer staff, you may want to run group orientations on a regular basis - perhaps every other month, or three or four times a year. Choose your format and methods. The format of your orientation is the medium through which material is presented. Varying the format is one way to keep the orientation interesting and fresh. Methods are the techniques you choose to present the content of your orientation.
As is probably clear from the previous parts of this section, you have a range of possibilities in deciding what to actually do in an orientation. The whole thing can be conceived of, for instance, as a straight presentation of information It generally makes more sense to think in other ways:.
Another advantage to running a participatory orientation is that, if you're a grass roots group, it probably reflects your organizational philosophy, thus reinforcing it in the minds of new staff.
Decide who will conduct the orientation. In the ideal world, the orientation would be conducted by the person or people who know the most about the areas covered. In reality, most organizations don't have the resources to make this happen. In small organizations, orientation may be conducted by one person -- probably the director or the new staff member's supervisor.
In a larger organization, many people may be involved, each presenting information about her particular job or responsibilities. In either case, a new staff member should meet with all other staff, either individually or in small groups, both to get to know them and to understand what they do and how they fit into the organization as a whole. If the orientation is conducted by a number of people, it is still important that one person oversee the process, acting as the main contact for the new staff person and making sure that he gets appropriate information, completes assigned tasks, has no trouble arranging meetings, and gets his questions answered.
Decide on the length of the orientation. Knowing the content and your goals, you should be able to estimate how much time you'll need to run the orientation you want to. You may run an informal orientation some conversation, introductions to other staff, some reading to do , which may take up part of the first day, or be spread out over a few days. Another possibility is a formal orientation i. Or you may choose to designate an orientation period at the beginning of a staff member's employment, during which she may be working, but may also be involved in orientation-related activities.
In the former cases, orientation might last only a few hours or a day or two. In the latter, it could last a week or a month, or even several months, and would probably include initial training. If you designate an orientation period that encompasses staff members' first few weeks or months of work, it still makes sense to ensure that they get the important information and introductions they need before they actually begin work. Then the rest - organizational history, for instance - can be passed on over time as they learn their jobs and settle into the organization.
An advantage of a long orientation period is that it gives people the time to absorb what, in most organizations, is actually a considerable amount of information. If it's all handed to a new staff member at once, she'll forget at least some of it before she turns around, and only have to relearn it anyway.
As is true for most of the material in this and many other sections of the Community Tool Box, the above refers to an ideal world, one in which there are the time and resources for a proper orientation period to take place.
In reality, especially in a small grass roots or community-based organization, the position has probably been empty for longer than it was supposed to be, other staff have been working overtime to do the job until someone could be hired, the new staff member is going to have to start work the instant he appears, and no one in the organization has time to spare to actually run an orientation.
Even if your organization can't devote much time solely to orientation, however, it's absolutely crucial to regard at least the first week or two as an orientation period, and to support a new staff member by providing information, helping him to make contact with other people inside and outside the organization, and introducing him to the community.
It will make all the difference in the long run, both in the quality of his work and his attitude toward the organization. When an organization hired a new Associate Director, she had to start instantly on a grant proposal that was due only days after she began work.
In the short term, educational materials help ensure people understand basic job processes. In the long term, training materials are useful in employee development.
Microlearning is a training method that delivers information over the course of several brief lessons rather than one long span. Microlearning can boost information retention and avoid overload or burnout. Customize this microlearning presentation to fit your organization. Inspire good customer service for team members who deal with the public by customizing this infographic. Update the tips or add your own, and modify the content to speak to what your organization does. One important aspect of new employee orientation is building the foundation for good work habits.
Consider creating a daily activity log that team members fill out to ensure they remain accountable for getting work done. Use this employee safety training module to help you create materials for new team members as well as materials to ensure everyone in the organization receives ongoing updates and refreshers on safety procedures.
Use these tips to customize this infographic or create your own from thousands of other templates. While many companies shifted to remote work during the pandemic, for some organizations, that shift will be permanent. The orientation and onboarding process for remote teams requires some specialized materials. Just as your HR team would share tips for in-office workers to be successful at their jobs, considering create some resource materials to guide remote workers.
Infographics like this one are easy to customize for your industry or even for each type of worker. With a Business account, teams can engage in real-time collaboration, apply their branding with one click and export files they can bring right into PowerPoint. With these tools, HR team members have no trouble setting new team members up for long-term success.
If you want to see how easy it is to create engaging yet informative orientation and onboarding materials for your new hires, simply sign up for a Venngage account and test out our drag-and-drop editor and fully customizable templates.
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Help Center Get help and support. Plan Types. Log in Sign up for free. Log in Sign up. What we offer. White Papers. Timeline Infographic Maker. While having a system in place for welcoming new employees is universally known to be helpful to the company and employees, many companies struggle to find the ideal mix of activities to make the employee feel welcome and give them a strong start to their new job.
In this article, we will discuss the components of an orientation program, what is important and how to design an orientation program.
New employee orientation is a great opportunity for a company to make a positive first impression on newly hired employees. The employee, undoubtedly nervous about their first day, benefits from a warm welcome and the company gets to share the positive aspects of working on their team. Good reasons for implementing an effective orientation plan include:. Depending on the person, anxiety can have a crippling effect, impeding the ability to learn about their new job effectively.
Orientation helps to ease the new employee into the workplace while guiding them through the first awkward days on the job. The benefits of a proper orientation far outweigh the costs, as they can help the employee get acclimated to the job and workplace culture much more quickly, reducing the time and costs associated with learning the job.
An orientation serves to show the employee that they are valued by the organization and support their success by providing the tools they need to do the job. When human resources presents an initial orientation that covers all the topics, supervisors and coworkers are less likely to have to take time out of their days to teach the employee about company policies, where everything is and how to work the necessary equipment.
When these items have already been covered, management and coworkers need only to help reinforce the concepts. Expectations should be clearly set and new employees should be excited about becoming productive members of the team. To map out the orientation process to get the maximum payoff, try following the steps below to get started:.
From the time the new employee walks in the door, the focus should be on easing their anxiety. Having an agenda outlined for the first few days will help the employee know what to expect. They should be escorted around the office to be introduced to everyone on their team, and their direct supervisors should have some one-on-one time with them, preferably an off-site lunch, where both parties can feel more at ease.
New employees should be made aware of rules and policies right away to help them avoid the blunder of accidentally doing something embarrassing.
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