Orientation Pitfalls and Onboarding Tips

The ultimate goal of acculturation onboarding is to assist new hires in becoming productive as quickly as possible. This is accomplished by providing information, training, and socialization in a supportive environment. Unfortunately, many companies lose sight of these objectives when they develop an orientation program.

It's not uncommon for HR and management to make the mistake of focusing on tasks rather than goals. For example, Human Resources may dump too much information on the new hire in an attempt to get their part in the process over with so they can hand the employee off to someone else. The employee's supervisor and coworkers may view integrating a new team member as a distraction from their own work - especially in a fast paced environment. These attitudes and actions can create a chilly reception for an individual who would otherwise be excited about starting a new job.

New Hires' Need to be Recognized

HR author Barbara O'Toole offers a wealth of ideas for ways to make a new hire feel welcome in her article "Orientation vs. Integration" at about.com. Integrating an individual into your corporate culture isn't something that only happens on an official level. Each department member plays a role in creating a truly welcoming environment. However, this effort can be supported by management. For example, if coworkers are given an extra 20 minute break to eat cake and celebrate a valued addition to their team on the new hire's first day, this creates instant good will.

Training Should be Ongoing and Accessible

AllegroHR's Acculturation Portal offers a variety of opportunities for employers to provide training and orientation in a way that isn't overwhelming. For example, visuals, audio, and text can be used to demonstrate how the new employee fits into the corporate structure and the objectives/functions of his or her job. This is a great supplement for an in-person discussion about job expectations with the new hire's supervisor.

It is important for new employees to know that they can revisit this information online as many times as necessary so they don't have to memorize it all in one sitting. Alternating online orientation modules with face-to-face mentoring also provides some breathing room for individuals to assimilate information without feeling like someone is "breathing down their neck". This process can begin in HR and then continue for as long as necessary while the new hire is settling in.

Onboarding Recent College Grads

College graduates are a unique workforce demographic with their own special onboarding needs in a corporate office setting. They generally come in three basic varieties:

• Those who have never held a job before
  
• Those who worked their way through college by taking jobs in the service sector (retail, restaurants, etc)
  
• Those who have worked as interns in a "white collar" industry
  

Former interns usually have a realistic idea of how the corporate world works and won't have much trouble adjusting to office life. However, the culture shock for new hires in groups 1 and 2 can be pretty extreme. They may pick up on social cues to figure out how to act by trial and error. However, the number of times HR or management has to pull one of these "newbies" aside to give them advice on "how things work around here" can be minimized with a good acculturation onboarding process.

First Time Job Holders

New hires fresh from college have a pretty good handle on socializing and will probably take to your corporate networking platform like a fish to water. However, they have spent the last 4 years (or more) surrounded by people who are roughly the same age they are. Learning to communicate with coworkers who represent a much larger age range may be a challenge. A strong mentoring program can help these young people adjust to working well with older, more experienced peers.

Rules about appropriate dress, punctuality, and other behaviors that impact how professionally the workplace operates should be addressed both in policies and in training/orientation. This can be done in a fun way so that grads see it as a way to fit in and be accepted as part of the team instead of a way their employer is trying to stifle their individuality.

Former Service/Retail Industry Workers

Not being under constant supervision can be a real change for workers who haven't held a regular office job before. They may perceive a lack of direction as a sign that they aren't valued (or that it's OK to spend time goofing off). Assigning multiple online acculturation onboarding tasks and following up via email can give these new hires a sense of purpose and direction. As they are recognized and rewarded for taking initiative and accessing various self-teaching modules, they will come to appreciate the greater autonomy provided by their new job.

The AllegroHR Acculturation Portal is a perfect match for recent college grads - many of whom have done at least some of their coursework online. Whether it is used for delivering information, providing opportunities for socialization, or presenting training/development materials, new hires can intuitively navigate the system easily on their first day of work.

Supervisor Onboarding: Workplace Harassment Training

Acculturation onboarding covers many aspects of training and orientation. Much of this instruction is designed to provide information and skills necessary for employees to be fully productive. However, there is a subset of acculturation that can actually be mandated by government entities.

In both California and Connecticut, private employers with 50 or more employees are required by law to provide workplace/sexual harassment training for all new supervisors. In Maine, employers with as few as 15 employees must send supervisors through specialized harassment training within 1 year of their hire date. Employers must also keep records of how and when these requirements were fulfilled.

If you hire an employee to serve in any supervisory capacity, he/she should participate in this training as soon as possible. This is the best way to protect your organization from litigation. In California, especially, employers can be held liable for any act of harassment on the part of a supervisor or manager.

Best Practices for Providing Workplace Harassment Training During Onboarding

The type and extent of information that must be covered in these classes varies by state. The level of interactivity may also be specified. For example, Connecticut allows supervisors to go through training online if they have the ability to ask questions in that environment. This means employers in CT could readily automate the process of signing supervisors up for training with a third party agency as part of the onboarding process.

For all employers, ensuring that no newly hired supervisors slip through the cracks is important. Your acculturation platform should definitely:

• Schedule workplace harassment training within the time-frame required by law
  
• Automatically follow up and verify classes were attended
  
• Ensure all reports documenting attendance are stored in an accessible format
  
• Survey the level of knowledge supervisors retain on the topics discussed in training
  
• Provide further resources for further self-training & remediation as needed
  

Acculturation - Making Out-Of-State Employees Feel At Home

Acculturation onboarding gets interesting when you have employees at locations in multiple states. You want them to feel tied in with the culture at your company's headquarters. At the same time, you need to recognize that each workforce will have its own social customs and way of communicating. If you've ever had employees from the Northeastern seaboard on a conference call with coworkers in the Southern U.S., the differences in style are pretty evident.

It's sadly common for there to be some tension between the corporate office and satellite locations. The people at headquarters often think that their colleagues at smaller sites simply can't cut it (otherwise they would be promoted and relocated to the main office). Folks working at secondary locations view the bigwigs at Corporate as hopelessly out of touch.

Taking Steps to Fix This

Better communication of your organization's overall objectives and vision is critical for bringing all your employees together as a team. Giving everyone access to the tools necessary to get things done is also vital. For example, if the people at headquarters have all the latest technology, their compatriots at other worksites need to be equally well equipped.

When it comes to acculturation, the easiest way to provide the same level of access for all your new hires is through an online portal. Each employee will experience a smooth, easy first day with all the required forms and policy acknowledgements presented in a virtual format. This includes forms that are specific to their state such as W4s for income tax withholding selections.

By the way, if you haven't seen our brand new state tax forms map, I highly recommend it. We put together this complimentary resource for all employers to use - not just our customers. That's because being super-helpful is one of Emerald Software's core valuesJ

More on Acculturating Disparate Workforces

Ideally, everyone on your payroll should be using the same platform for interoffice communication. Our software integrates readily with intranet site products like Microsoft SharePoint that provide collaborative features and social networking tools. You can also build your own system from the ground up using our AllegroHR Acculturation Portal product.

Remember that employees love to connect with other people who share their hobbies. Special interest groups that can interact long-distance are one way to build bonds between your out-of-state workforces and the employees at your corporate office. Have someone set up a SIG for WoW and watch the networking begin. Just make sure they aren't playing on company time!

A strong online culture can actually break down barriers between people from widely varying backgrounds. Giving new hires the opportunity to socialize with coworkers at all your organization's locations helps them see the big picture. Remember to use this platform to instill your corporate values in new employees at all your locations through positive, consistent messaging.

Are Your Onboarding Videos In Need of an Upgrade?

As with any new technology, there is a point at which novelty begins to wear a little thin. Video has been around plenty long enough for that to happen. In the distant past, it was a sign of modernity and creativity to greet new hires with an orientation video instead of just a brochure or slideshow during onboarding. These productions often cost a great deal of money and employers took well deserved pride in the results.

Now, any company can make a video - and employees are not impressed with "special effects". After all, we can watch Avatar in 3D. Our standards are higher than they used to be. Workforce communications consultant Fran Melmed goes so far as to declare "Death to Your Orientation Videos" in this scathing blog post. Her take down of the genre is spot on. Employers who try to be "hip" and "relevant" are failing miserably. Another blogger goes so far as to refer to the content in corporate orientation films as Fascist brainwashing.

In contrast, the employee-designed videos Fran links to make it evident where the real creative talent lies in most organizations. As a tool for introducing new hires to corporate culture in a fun way, it makes sense to enlist the aid of people who are actually in touch with it from day to day. Perhaps it's time to get your rank and file workers involved in the production of your onboarding videos.

This doesn't necessarily have to be part of the formal orientation module either. Do you have a YouTube channel or a corporate blog where workers can upload their own content (subject to approval)? New hires would probably love to spend time watching fun videos and seeing what their coworkers are up to. With AllegroHR's Acculturation Portal, you can add updated content and links to cool videos at any time - making it easier to change with the times.

Tips For Onboarding Older Employees

As an employer, you've been bombarded with lots of information on how to attract Gen X and Y workers and incorporate them into the workforce. Not as much attention is being paid to effective onboarding for Boomers and other older new hires. However, since the 55+ age group is the most rapidly growing demographic in the U.S. and most of these people plan to continue working, they make up a huge talent pool. While you are revamping your recruiting and hiring process to make it more relevant to younger employees, it's important to ensure that it is still friendly to older workers. Here are a few areas to review:

Be Straightforward in Communication

Mature individuals have been around the block with more than one employer and won't be impressed with fantastic promises. They want information that is presented clearly, accurately, and believably. Leave the hype out of your recruiting spiel with these applicants and focus on what's important to them. Make sure the introduction to your company includes an emphasis on values that resonate with this age group - integrity, quality, loyalty, etc. Be prepared to back up these statements with a track record for being a trustworthy employer.

Provide Loads of Information

Older new hires should be offered lots of additional resources during onboarding that focus on getting the most out of health benefits, retirement planning, disability coverage, and life insurance. Senior citizens in particular actually read this stuff. They are past the point where they think they have all the time in the world to make the right decisions about these benefits.

Introduce Older Workers to New Technology Gently

If your acculturation program focuses heavily on the use of social networking and other modern technologies, don't assume older employees won't be interested in participating. Just be sure your onboarding module includes detailed instructions for how to use these tools instead of assuming that "Everyone knows how to use FaceBook and this is no different".

Prevent Intergenerational Conflict

For older workers who will be reporting to a younger supervisor, orientation should include a Q&A that focuses on how this age difference impacts the boss/employee relationship. Getting awkwardness out in the open where it can be dealt with is important.

The AllegroHR Acculturation Portal can assist you in making it easier to onboard older workers by providing:

• A live chat feature that connects new hires to HR when they have questions about their benefits
  
• The ability to link to news articles and awards to highlight the company's commitment to its workforce
  
• Connection to training partners who can bring employees up to speed with the use of new technology as needed
  

The ability to track and analyze acculturation onboarding to make sure it is effective and highlight areas where older workers are not engaging fully

Acculturating Temps Can Minimize Workplace Friction

According to Workforce Management, the University of Arizona has released a report about the negative effects of hiring a high percentage of temporary workers. Full time employees apparently don't take kindly to working in an environment where many of their coworkers are contingent labor. You might think traditionally hired workers would be happy to be among the elite few actually getting a full benefits package; but there is a downside to being a "permanent" employee surrounded by temps.

One challenge regular workers face is that of training new hires provided by a staffing agency. Temp jobs are usually fairly short term. This means turnover is high and full time employees may have to devote significant time to getting temps up to speed. They would probably prefer to apply this effort to advancing their own careers - or just handling their day to day workload.

It's also normal for "cliques" to form at work if regular employees feel their positions within an organization are at risk. When a company hires temps to perform tasks usually handled by full time workers, this can undermine the perceived value of the job in question. This can lead to temporary workers being given the cold shoulder - which is bad for everyone's morale. On a related note, temps who don't see any chance of being converted to full time status tend to be disengaged and may not have the best attitude. They feel like second class employees rather than part of a team.

Acculturation Onboarding Can Help Everyone Work Together

With a strong acculturation program, temporary staff members can receive more of their training and orientation online. This may lessen the mentoring burden being placed on full time employees. The AllegroHR Acculturation Portal can be integrated with most third party training vendors. So, new hires (whether temporary or permanent) can readily access the education they need to become productive using a single sign-on for all modules.

It is also important for contingent workers not to be treated differently than the regular employees. They need to go through a similar socialization process and be encouraged to participate in intranet based communications. For example, they should be invited to read and comment on the corporate blog even if it is assumed that their tenure with the company will be short. Welcoming temporary assignees into the team by including them in daily social activities and interactions paves the way for a transition to direct hire status for promising temps. These actions on the part of employers help quell potential suspicion and mistrust on the part of both full time workers and contingent labor.

Onboarding and Social Media - Where to Draw the Line

A Workforce Management article published in December of last year points to a troubling fact about today's typical U.S. companies. Apparently, 1 out of 2 organizations still don't have a policy in place regarding the proper use of social networking technology. Why does this matter? Employees are using sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn both at work and at home in ways that can negatively impact their employers.

Simplistic Solutions Won't Work

It might seem like an easy solution to make accessing social network sites at work a violation of company policy. However, this can hamper efforts to modernize workplace communications. You can't realistically tell employees not to use Twitter when your HR department is using this medium as an adjunct to its other communication methods. In the same vein, encouraging new hires to build a company LinkedIn profile and then prohibiting them from actually using it to network doesn't make much sense.

Telling employees what they can or cannot say online when they are logging in from home is even more fraught with the potential for trouble. Can workers express an opinion about their workplace in a public forum? Yes. However, they must not be permitted to divulge sensitive information or represent themselves as speaking on behalf of the company in the process.

Policies Must Be Created or Updated Now

Companies need to stipulate in their confidentially agreements that online posting is a prohibited means of disseminating privileged information along with the consequences for failure to adhere to the policy. It must be made clear that this applies regardless of what account (personal or corporate) is used to carry out the activity and whether the employee is on the clock or not. At the same time, employers can't afford to get carried away with invasive monitoring practices - privacy rights for activities that take place off-site are still a hotly contested topic.

Employee Compliance Must Start with Onboarding

Unfortunately, according to a report from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, approximately 25% of employers have had to take disciplinary action against workers for inappropriate use of social networking sites. The first step in curtailing this type of behavior is having new hires read and sign your company's policy regarding this technology. Then, they should receive acculturation training that assists them in using your company's social networking tools appropriately. The Emerald Software Group suite of products including Universal Onboarding and AllegroHR Acculturation Portal support both of these best practices.