Page 161 - Retaining Top Employees
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                                               Making the Difference with Orientation  149


                                    • Encourage cultural integration.
                                    —are equally important at all times to all organizations.
                                    For some companies, the major cause of dissatisfaction
                                 may be mismanaged employee expectations. For others, the
                                 real issue may be that it’s hard for new employees to feel like
                                 part of the team (cultural integration).
                                    It’s important to be clear about which aspects of retention
                                 really are issues in your organization. Putting emphasis on the
                                 wrong aspect of retention can be worse than ignoring the issue
                                 altogether. Misjudging the climate within your organization and
                                 putting processes in place to deal with cultural integration, for
                                 example, when the issue is really managing expectations will
                                 confuse your employees and leave them believing that the
                                 organization is out of touch and insincere.
                                    To make sure you deal with the right issues, use Table 8-4 to
                                 weight the relative importance of each area to your organization.

                                             1. Not a                    4. There is no
                                                      2. We only                   5. People are
                                           problem at all—     3. We face this  doubt this
                                  Retention           occasionally                  leaving in
                                              we’re             issue fairly  contributes to
                                  Imperative         have a problem                droves and this
                                           completely on  with this.  regularly.  employee  is the reason.
                                            top of this.                 dissatisfaction.
                                 Retention
                                 starts here
                                 Manage
                                 expectations
                                 Cultural
                                 integration
                                 Table 8-4. Prioritizing orientation program imperatives
                                    For each retention imperative you marked as 3, 4, or 5 in
                                 Table 8-4, draft an orientation program objective specific to
                                 your organization in Table 8-5. Use the examples given in
                                 Tables 8-1 and 8-2 as guides.

                                 Design Specific Orientation Program Content for Each
                                 Objective
                                 Finally, for each program objective in Table 8-5, write three spe-
                                 cific content elements for your orientation program that will ful-
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