Would you invite people to your home without preparing?

That’s what lots of us do to our employees on their first day of employment. Put yourself in their place: it’s your first day, you’re a little anxious, because you don’t know what the day will hold. Other employees know what they’ll be doing today because it’s on their calendar – your calendar says “start new job”. Other employees are greeted by the receptionist as they come in with “Good morning, John...Good morning, Barbara... How was your weekend?” - you’re greeted with “Good morning, may I help you?”

How much more unwelcoming can we make their first day!

You’d never invite people for dinner and find out their names after they arrived. You’d never invite people for dinner and ask them to clean the house. You’d never invite them and when they arrive say, “Let’s go to the store and pick out what you want for dinner, then we’ll cook it together.”

Yet that’s what we do to new staff if we don’t prepare! 

Follow these 10 easy and inexpensive steps to new employee orientation:

1.   Prepare for their arrival by telling other staff, cleaning their work space, ordering supplies they’ll need, making a schedule.

2.   Give them an introduction to the organization. Many companies have used scavenger hunts, bingo cards and other ways to get them to learn about the organization in a more fun way than lectures or reading.

3.   Introduce them to co-workers, vendors, supervisors, and other people they’ll be working with.

4.   Provide training on basic job duties. This is best done by a coworker. It doubles as a retention benefit to that coworker by giving them the opportunity to train others, and help other people learn.

5.   Review all policies and practices. The employee handbook is a great recruitment and training tool, as long as it’s current and relevant. Use the employee handbook, work process manuals, training manuals, and policy and procedure manuals for written reinforcement and as a resource manual.

6.   Provide an overview of benefits and services. They can read a good amount of this, but you want to get them excited about the really great things. Then they can ask questions later.

7.   Discuss career/life goals and needs and how the organization can help meet them. Find out early what motivates them so that you can provide positive reinforcement that’s meaningful to them.

8.   Discuss your expectations and those of the organization. Most often when employees leave sooner than you wanted them to, they say things like “I just didn’t understand what was expected of me.”

9.   Provide a tour of all facilities where they’ll be working, which includes vendors and customers, if their job causes them to be in other locations. 

10. Include them in the organization’s activities as soon as possible. It’s those things like employee baseball games, birthday parties and baby showers that make an employee really feel  a part of the group and welcome.

The first few days are their first impression, so make them want to stay - keep quality employees with new employee orientation!

Tell us what you do in orientation that helps people want to stay.