Page 153 - Retaining Top Employees

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Making the Difference with Orientation 141

Length Is Not Important
You will have your own ways of approaching each of the four
fundamental points,whether by one-to-one discussions between new
employee and manager,handouts,classroom training,or otherwise. In
terms of making your employees feel at home,the length and style of
your orientation program are not important.What matters are the
four points. If your orientation doesn’t hit these four points,then it
isn’t helping your new employees feel at home.
Review your current orientation program content.Which of the
four points are covered? How would you score your orientation pro-
gram on each point using a scale from 1 (pretty poor) to 5 (great)?
Which areas need work? Who’s going to redesign these elements?
When?
Medium-Term Goals of a Retention-Focused
Orientation Program

Getting past induction and Orientation
helping your employees Content
feel at home are the two This book isn’t the place to
immediate goals for a delve in detail into the generic con-
retention-focused orienta- tent of a new employee orientation
program. Here we’re concentrating
tion program. Achieving
on those aspects of your orientation
both has an obvious and
program that most impact the reten-
immediate effect on the
tion of top employees.
employees’ productivity. If you need help with the basics of
As we said earlier, a designing and implementing an effec-
retention-focused orienta- tive orientation program,see my
tion program also has guide, The Complete Guide to
three medium-term goals: Orientation and Re-Orientation (EVNA,
2000),available from Amazon.com or
1. Acknowledge that at www.deliverthepromise.com.
“retention starts here.”
2. Manage expectations.
3. Encourage cultural integration.
These three goals may not have any immediate impact on
productivity or any visible effect on the employees’ attitude, but
each has a fundamental and vital role in turning your new hires