Staff Matters Newsletter May/June 1997
NEW EMPLOYEE ORIENTATION:
Be Nice to the New Kid
By Steve O'Connor

This program consisted of a series of humiliations for the new kid and included assigning me to several of the more unpleasant tasks in the back of the restaurant. Of course, no adolescent training effort would be complete without the obligatory practical joke. My assistant manager explained to me that the supply of potatoes were kept in the basement and that the stock room employees who worked down there were responsible for bringing up more supplies whenever we needed them. All we had to do was call them on the intercom. "Intercom?" I was further informed that the intercom microphone was on a retractable cord on the countertop, right next to the sink. I was told to grasp the microphone by its stainless steel top and squeeze the handle. I could then communicate with the guys in the basement. Made sense to me. It was kind of a funny looking microphone, but hey, this was California, everything looked a little funny to me.

I was completely oblivious to the other employee's snickers and to their anticipation of my first stock order from the basement. It didn't take long. "O'Connor, we're out of potatoes. Call down to the basement and get more." Well, of course, there was no basement, no stock room employees and this thing was not a microphone. As I reached for the shiny, steel device, with the black pressure handle, there should have been a little voice in my head crying, "No, don't do it." But there was no voice inside my head and apparently nothing else inside my head either. I grabbed the handle, yanked the cord from its countertop resting place, positioned it squarely in front of my face and squeezed.

I'm not sure what I was aware of first, the gush of high pressure water that smacked me in the face or the howling laughter of my fellow employees watching this gullible putz from Michigan make a fool of himself. This is not how a new employee orientation program should go.

Establishing a solid orientation program for new employees should be based on benchmarking what works well in other organizations and listening to feedback from your current employees. Identifying similar employers that have a low turnover and reported high morale is a good way to get started. H.R. Magazine, in its November 1996 issue, references how the National Semiconductor Corporation used benchmarking. It looked to the Walt Disney Corporation as a model and incorporated many of its factors into their program. Another employer was the University of Minnesota. The university's focus is to both train supervisors and to request feedback from employees. Supervisors are trained about the purpose and process of the orientation. It uses focus groups to elicit suggestions from employees. One of the things to come out of these focus groups was a set of questions that most new employees want to know. (See sidebar.) Many of these questions can be applied to almost any employment situation.

Questions most new employees want answers to:

1. What is really expected of me?
2. How do I gain acceptance?
3. How do I get ahead in the company?
4. How do I get rewarded for a good job?
5. What is the boss really like?
6. I know the policies and procedures, but what are the real rules of the game?
7. How do I fit into the total picture?
8. Just how much security do I have?
9. What does the company really do?

Using these tested methods to improve your new employee orientation program will help your new hires be better informed and more focused on the priorities you want them focused on. It will also ensure that your new people don't feel the orientation program is all wet.