Page 150 - Retaining Top Employees

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138 Retaining Top Employees

this is great!”? I suggest the answer to both questions is “highly
unlikely.”

Immediate Impact of a Retention-Focused
Orientation Program
Orientation programs can be designed to meet any number of
objectives—the most common being time to productivity. An
orientation program that also has retention as a main objective
must be designed to achieve two immediate and three medium-
term goals. (We’ll discuss
the medium-term goals in
Time to productivity
the next section.)
The length of time it takes
to get a new employee to
Escape from Induction
the point where he or she can fulfill
An orientation process
the requirements of the job
autonomously. It will be different for designed to be retention-
each major job category. For example, focused must make a
a major white goods manufacturer clear distinction between
might define time to productivity for orientation and induction.
a new VP of Sales as the length of Induction (in-process-
time it takes to have him fully in con-
ing, form-filling, benefits
trol of his own schedule—making,
and compensation details,
taking,and running meetings with staff
health and safety instruc-
and major clients.Time to productivi-
ty for a new production line opera- tion) is all about giving
tive might be the time it takes to get employees tools.
her able to produce 25 units per shift Orientation is showing
with a less than 0.6% defect rate. employees what they can
achieve with the tools. For
example, training an employee to use Lotus Notes is induction,
while a class on using Lotus Notes to reduce customer call
times is orientation.
The key point is this: there’s little about induction that’s
related to retention. Induction is more about beginning than
staying. Concentrating on induction at the expense of orienta-
tion undermines your retention activities. Top performers in par-
ticular want to get beyond mere induction fairly quickly and on