Page 159 - Retaining Top Employees

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Making the Difference with Orientation 147

Dialogue, Not Monologue
Achieving this third medium-term goal involves a dialogue
between the employer and the employee about each other’s
vision and values. It’s amazing how many orientation programs are
straight monologues at the employee,rather than a constructive engage-
ment with the employee.
Top performers in particular won’t appreciate this very much,nor
will they benefit from it.You should be designing your program to allow
new hires to express what they believe they’re bringing to the organi-
zation and what they want from the relationship in both the short and
long terms.

Retention
Orientation Program Objective
Imperative
Cultural By completion of The [XYZ Company] Orientation
integration Program, every partner [company term for “employee”]
will be a member of the [XYZ Company] family.

Table 8-3. “Cultural integration” orientation program objective

commitment to cultural integration. (Notice the absence of
how’s. This is about what. The how’s come later.) Their
expressed goal is simple, elegant, and sweeping.
To achieve this goal, this organization included the following
content in its orientation program. (The following is only an
excerpt; there were 16 content elements supporting the objec-
tive of cultural integration.)

• An “acronym quiz” to ensure all new employees under-
stood the vocabulary used in the organization.
• A “legends and myths” book was distributed, detailing
the many (sometimes apocryphal) stories that had
developed about the history and development of the
company.
• Buffet lunch over three days, with tables hosted by rep-
resentatives of senior management.
• A mid-program “town hall” conducted by the CEO.