Page 65 - Successful Onboarding

54 • Successful Onboarding

programs in lieu of wage increases. Supply and demand for labor, more
than employer concerns about efficiency or safety, were probably the lead-
ing motivation in all of this “human capital” investment.
It was also during this period that new employees at many large com-
panies started to experience something approximating present-day orien-
tation. Instead of reporting immediately to their supervisors, entrants first
went through a filter of personnel departments. Clerks recorded their
admission, collected vital information, and explained basic employment
policies and benefits. Unions often added their own, separate process for
welcoming new employees.
Growing prosperity during 1950s and 1960s made companies worry
more about the cost of labor disruptions from strikes than the added
cost of the benefits. Big labor, big business, and big government, having
united so well to win the war, now worked together to provide for their
“organization men.” As companies adopted a growing array of benefit pro-
grams in the 1950s and 1960s, orientation became an ordeal of filling out
paperwork and choosing among an array of options. New employment
laws only added to the focus on compliance. And as behavioral scientists
called attention to the talent inherent even in rank-and-file workers, com-
panies in the late 1960s started developing broad-based training programs.
With the introduction of these training programs and their spread to the
bulk of the workforce, many companies experimented with assessment
centers that tried to match the skills of new entrants with company needs,
but unfortunately these rarely went beyond the superficial.
During this same period, companies started paying special attention to
their managerial and professional talent. Even before the war, companies
had developed special career tracks and benefit programs for these skilled
employees, who were increasingly segregated from other employees
by education. By the 1960s, with the growing prestige of management
science, companies built up extensive hierarchies of these employees by
offering elaborate developmental paths. Succession planning, mentoring,
stretch assignments for high potentials, and even 360-degree feedback all
became more common at larger companies. But the special “management
tracks” set up at many big companies often saw their budgets and breadth
challenged and cut, partly because of pressure from union leaders,
who condemned management tracks as elitist. Because of inconsistent