Page 152 - Retaining Top Employees

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140 Retaining Top Employees

Bonding, Not Appraisal
As we’ve seen,induction is the in-processing,form-filling,pol-
icy-explaining activity that many people automatically think
of when they think “orientation.” Real orientation,on the other hand,
is about enabling your new hires to feel at home—our most impor-
tant goal. Real orientation quickly dispenses with induction and moves
on to help them feel at home.
Too many orientation programs do quite the opposite. By drowning
the new employee in huge amounts of information,acronyms,and
phrases that he or she cannot possibly understand at that point,they
end up distancing the employee from the employer.
When this happens,orientation,instead of promoting bonding
between the employee and employer,causes the employee to do a
cool appraisal,to mentally step back to try to make sense of this flood
of information.That appraisal can easily turn to dissatisfaction.

• How to integrate as team players more quickly.
Let’s briefly consider these four points.

Know what’s expected of you. Orientation: “We have a strong
commitment here to maintaining a work-life balance. Let me
show you what that means about working hours in this organi-
zation ....”

Know how to add value. Orientation: “Our major challenge right
now is to reduce customer service call response times by 40%.
We’re expecting you to investigate the technology investment
we have to make to achieve that.”
Know how to communicate with others. Orientation: “Here is
your divisional organization chart, together with everyone’s tele-
phone extensions and e-mail addresses. At lunch today you’ll
get a chance to meet with the two people to whom you will
most often report. We’ve asked them to talk to you specifically
about how best to communicate with them.”

Know how to integrate into the team. Orientation: “This is
Jose. He’s your assigned ‘buddy’ for the next three weeks. It’s
his job to introduce you to everyone you’ll be working with
closely and to explain how the team interacts.”