Five Myths about New Employee Orientation

No matter how rigorous your company’s screening and interviewing process is, new hires want confirmation that they made the right decision when they chose to join your organization. Employee orientation is your chance to put any remaining doubt to rest. Orientation is typically your first interaction with new employees, after they’re officially hired, and how you conduct employee orientation can leave a lasting impression. Whether that impression is good or bad is up to you.

There’s no standard when it comes to employee orientation, so everyone does things differently. And like most things, everyone thinks their way is the best way. And while that might be true—your company just might have this whole orientation thing all figured out—there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about how to conduct employee orientation.

Because of all the inconsistent reports and contradictory information, we decided to take some time to explore a few of the common misconceptions about employee orientation and give you some things to think about moving forward. Here are five myths:

MYTH 1: Employee orientation has to be done in person. It’s a widely held belief that employee orientation must be conducted in person. This has been the case for so long that many companies don’t even consider that there are other ways to do it. It’s not uncommon for organizations to offer multiple orientation sessions throughout the year—some companies even offer orientation on a monthly or weekly basis. It’s also common for organizations to either schedule start dates around orientation sessions or have new employees start but fend for themselves until the next orientation date arrives. Aside from just continuing to do what’s always been done, the argument for the in-person format is almost entirely based on the desire for one-on-one interaction with new employees.

• Something to think about: Let’s face it, very few things have to be done in person these days. We meet people online, shop online, apply for mortgages online… Who’s to say employee orientation can’t be done online, too? When employee orientation is hosted in person, the presenter’s focus is on getting the information out, not necessarily on taking time to single out any one person in the room. If your orientation includes all the boring-but-necessary forms that need to be filled out, you might consider making all the paperwork available online so employees can get it out of the way before they meet with you face to face. Once you begin exploring the options you’ll see that there are so many other ways to accomplish your goal of getting quality face time with your new employees.

MYTH 2: Employee orientation has to be done in a group. Much like it’s commonly believed that orientation must be conducted in person, it’s also fairly standard for the material to be presented to a group of people, sometimes a large group of new hires. While group orientation does offer some advantages, especially for new companies and organizations that tend to hire multiple people at the same time, employee orientation in a group setting is no longer the norm.

• Something to think about: Although it might seem simple and efficient to get everyone together and get all the information distributed at one time, it can be argued that preparing for large group-setting employee orientation programs is actually more time-consuming and costly (for presenters and new hires) than allowing new employees to review the orientation materials on their own.
  If personal interaction is your goal and you have a group of people gathered together in a room, are you really getting the opportunity to interact one-on-one with all of them? If the point of employee orientation is to interact with your new hires, whether you’re presenting to 10 people or 100, is anyone in the room getting any special attention? Are there a handful of people asking questions and dominating the presenter’s attention, leaving everyone else to simply follow along? If you’ve hired one person and don’t intend to hire any others, doesn’t it make sense to get that person up to speed right away? And really, when you have one presenter and 20 people, isn’t it more likely that the 20 people are going to remember the presenter than that the presenter is going to be able to remember all 20 people?

MYTH 3: Employee orientation has to last several hours (or two days or a full week): It’s very common for companies to cram as much information into employee orientation as possible. New employees have a lot to learn, and orientation is the time to teach it all, right? There’s so much information to cover, you need a full day to get through it all, right? Or maybe two full days. And since you’re already taking up that much time, why not add even more information and go for a full week? Does this sound like the mentality at your place of work?

• Something to think about: Orientation should only last as long as it has to. None of your new employees are counting down the seconds until orientation, so why not keep it simple and do everything possible to not overwhelm your new staff before they even start working. Keeping employee orientation short will help your new hires stay awake and make them less likely to wonder why they chose to work for you in the first place.

MYTH 4: My small company doesn’t need employee orientation. Because the large group-setting employee orientation process isn’t realistic for small businesses, small companies often don’t offer any official orientation program for new hires. In fact, more often than not, new employees at small companies are often asked to sit down, fill out some paperwork, read the employee handbook (if there is one), and get to work.

• Something to think about: Regardless of the size of your company, your new employees will have questions and need information from you before they can get started, just like you need to get some information from them. Hiring only a few new employees a year is not a good reason to not have an official employee orientation program.

• Something else to think about: If you don’t have a formal employee orientation in place, someone at your office is breaking in new employees. Do you know who that person is? And more important, is that who you want serving as the welcome committee and your example of a model employee? Wouldn’t it be better to have a well-thought-out, well-implemented employee orientation program that tells new hires what’s really important and not what Susie from Purchasing thinks is important? If you think of orientation as an investment in your employees, you’ll realize the importance of getting your new hires acclimated quickly—and correctly.

MYTH 5: Orientation is the same thing as onboarding. The words “onboarding” and “orientation” are often used interchangeably to describe the early stages of a new hire’s time with your company. The two words are thrown around so casually it wasn’t until recently that we started to notice that almost all of our clients mean different things when they use those terms.

• Something to think about: Orientation is part of the onboarding process. Employee orientation is all about preparing your new hires to perform their job. Have they filled out their tax forms? Have they selected their health insurance plan? Have they read the handbook? These things are handled during employee orientation.

• Onboarding is a more in-depth process that provides new employees with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to become successful and productive members of your team. A well-thought-out, properly executed onboarding strategy makes new hires feel welcome and often leads to greater employee retention.

Before your new employees even walk through the door on their first day, you’ve probably already invested a decent amount of time and money to get them there. Because you’ve already invested in them and are depending on them to be successful contributors, it’s necessary to understand the orientation and onboarding process so you can get them up to speed as quickly as possible.