Program orientation definition

Are you going to orient everyone in the organization, or only some people? Will there be different orientations for different positions? Once you're clear on your audience, the rest will follow logically. Is it a group or individual orientation? If you're a new organization, or if you've just gotten a new pot of money, you may be hiring several people at once.

A group orientation offers some advantages over an individual one: new staff members can discuss issues among themselves, some may ask important questions that others in the group wouldn't have thought about, and you can plan group activities - role plays, for instance - that might help people understand their jobs and the organization better. Another advantage of a group is that the focus of the orientation is less likely to get lost in the day-to-day work of the organization if there's a group to consider.

All of this raises the question of whether you should wait until you have a group of new and relatively new employees before you conduct an orientation. Despite the advantages of a group orientation, putting off an orientation is usually a bad idea. The new staff member needs the support and knowledge at the beginning. By the time you get around to it, she may have already learned much of what she needs to know. She may also be frustrated that she had to do it on her own, and had to endure the stress of not understanding the organization, and not knowing what she was supposed to do.

By waiting, you'll have lost the point of the orientation. Clarify what you want to accomplish. Is the orientation meant simply to introduce the new staff member to others in the organization, or do you hope that it will equip her to start right in on her job? What are your goals here? Answering that question will help you reach your next decision.

Decide on the content of the orientation. Knowing whom you're orienting and to what purpose should give you the basis for determining how much of the content laid out above you want to include.

Will you go through the personnel policies? Will you take the new staff member to visit other sites or other organizations? Are there observations or activities that need to be included? Start by laying out the specific content areas that need to be covered. Then, for each of them, you may be able to see what would be the best format and method to cover that area, and who would be the best person to present it. Decide whether the orientation will be group or individual.

To some extent, this will be determined for you by your situation. If you've just hired one new staff member and you're not planning to hire others in the foreseeable future, then an individual orientation is in the cards. If you're new or are overhauling your organization, you may be hiring several people at once, and a group orientation probably makes more sense.

If you're constantly recruiting volunteer staff, you may want to run group orientations on a regular basis - perhaps every other month, or three or four times a year. Choose your format and methods. The format of your orientation is the medium through which material is presented.

Varying the format is one way to keep the orientation interesting and fresh. Methods are the techniques you choose to present the content of your orientation. As is probably clear from the previous parts of this section, you have a range of possibilities in deciding what to actually do in an orientation.

The whole thing can be conceived of, for instance, as a straight presentation of information It generally makes more sense to think in other ways:. Another advantage to running a participatory orientation is that, if you're a grass roots group, it probably reflects your organizational philosophy, thus reinforcing it in the minds of new staff.

Decide who will conduct the orientation. In the ideal world, the orientation would be conducted by the person or people who know the most about the areas covered. In reality, most organizations don't have the resources to make this happen. In small organizations, orientation may be conducted by one person -- probably the director or the new staff member's supervisor. In a larger organization, many people may be involved, each presenting information about her particular job or responsibilities.

In either case, a new staff member should meet with all other staff, either individually or in small groups, both to get to know them and to understand what they do and how they fit into the organization as a whole. If the orientation is conducted by a number of people, it is still important that one person oversee the process, acting as the main contact for the new staff person and making sure that he gets appropriate information, completes assigned tasks, has no trouble arranging meetings, and gets his questions answered.

Decide on the length of the orientation. Knowing the content and your goals, you should be able to estimate how much time you'll need to run the orientation you want to. You may run an informal orientation some conversation, introductions to other staff, some reading to do , which may take up part of the first day, or be spread out over a few days. Another possibility is a formal orientation i.

Or you may choose to designate an orientation period at the beginning of a staff member's employment, during which she may be working, but may also be involved in orientation-related activities. In the former cases, orientation might last only a few hours or a day or two. In the latter, it could last a week or a month, or even several months, and would probably include initial training. If you designate an orientation period that encompasses staff members' first few weeks or months of work, it still makes sense to ensure that they get the important information and introductions they need before they actually begin work.

Then the rest - organizational history, for instance - can be passed on over time as they learn their jobs and settle into the organization. An advantage of a long orientation period is that it gives people the time to absorb what, in most organizations, is actually a considerable amount of information.

If it's all handed to a new staff member at once, she'll forget at least some of it before she turns around, and only have to relearn it anyway. As is true for most of the material in this and many other sections of the Community Tool Box, the above refers to an ideal world, one in which there are the time and resources for a proper orientation period to take place.

In reality, especially in a small grass roots or community-based organization, the position has probably been empty for longer than it was supposed to be, other staff have been working overtime to do the job until someone could be hired, the new staff member is going to have to start work the instant he appears, and no one in the organization has time to spare to actually run an orientation.

Even if your organization can't devote much time solely to orientation, however, it's absolutely crucial to regard at least the first week or two as an orientation period, and to support a new staff member by providing information, helping him to make contact with other people inside and outside the organization, and introducing him to the community.

It will make all the difference in the long run, both in the quality of his work and his attitude toward the organization. When an organization hired a new Associate Director, she had to start instantly on a grant proposal that was due only days after she began work. The Executive Director worked with her on the proposal, and made sure she spent some time every day getting to know other staff members.

He took her to every meeting he had for the first six weeks or so of her employment, so she could meet people from other agencies and the community, and understand the issues that the meetings addressed or exposed. In daily conversations, he tried to tell her everything he could about the organization that wasn't obvious or available from printed material.

As a result, she was able to write a successful proposal, and to slide seamlessly into the job. She ultimately became a key figure in the development of the organization. Evaluate your orientation each time you run it. Evaluation will help you make your orientation more effective, which, in turn, will make your staff more effective. An evaluation should include feedback from those evaluated, and can be built right into the orientation itself.

A final piece of the process might be reflection on what has taken place, and some ideas about what was missing, what was particularly helpful, and what could have been done better. You might also consider asking staff members to reevaluate their orientation after they've been on the job for a while. At the end of the orientation, they may not yet know what's most or least helpful, and what they'll use or not use.

They might have a better perspective on those issues in three or six months. Create some sort of marker for the end of the orientation or orientation period. A small party, an official welcome to the staff, the presentation of keys This kind of closure - and it doesn 't have to be tremendously formal - can help to facilitate the transition from "new " to "regular" staff member.

An orientation at the very beginning of their employment is an important tool in helping new staff members understand and adjust to the organization and their jobs, and to become effective as soon as possible. It also gives new staff members the chance to meet their colleagues and to start the process of becoming integrated into the organization.

Orientations should include introductions to the organization, the target population, the community, and the job itself, as well as an evaluation and something to mark the transition to "regular employee. If you've never run an orientation for new staff - or if you're a new organization - now is a good time to create one. If you've been running orientations for years, you might reexamine yours, and see how it could be improved to better serve your organization and its new staff.

An orientation that does its job can improve both the effectiveness of your organization and the quality of life for new staff members. Note: With the exception of the Ron Kaufman article, these websites demonstrate different forms of orientation and different ways to use the internet as a tool for or supplement to a new staff orientation.

They aren't meant as models, but simply as examples. The Big Picture in Adult Education. Includes links that relate to various parts of the orientation. This sort of thing can be used as a teaching tool or as a way to make available more material than can be presented in the orientation itself. An article by Ron Kaufman, a Singapore-based consultant, about new staff orientation in a business context.

Most large firms tend to have a collective orientation approach. But small firms, which have fewer new appointees to socialize frequently use the individual approach. Individual socialization is popular even with large Finns when they hire executives whose number is small. Orientation becomes serial when an experienced employee inducts a new hire. The experienced employee acts as a tutor and model for the new hire.

When new hires do not have predecessors available to guide them or to model their behavior upon, the orientation becomes disjunctive.

Each option has its own advantages and pitfalls. Consistent use of this strategy will ensure a minimum amount of change within the firm over time. But, maintenance of the status quo itself may breed resistance to change.

Further, if the experienced employee is frustrated and apathetic towards work and the firm, it is likely that he or she would pass on the same to the new hire. Disjunctive orientation almost stands on the other side of the spectrum. Such induction is likely to produce more inventive and creative employees because the new hire is not burdened by traditions.

But this benefit needs to be weighed against the potential for creating deviants, that is, individuals who fail due to an inadequate role model-to understand how their job is to be done and bow it fits into the grand scheme of the company.

In an informal orientation, new employees are instructed to report to the HR department for an explanation of company policies before being referred to the immediate supervisor for an on-the-job briefing on specific work procedures. Informal orientation tends to be brief- lasting one hour or even less. Formal orientation is elaborate and is spread over a couple of weeks or months. Most formal programs consist of three stages-. This follow-up meeting usually takes place between a new employee and his or her supervisor a week or so after the employee has begun working.

A formal orientation program is shared by the HR specialists and the supervisors. The former covers such areas as organizational issues, employee benefits, and introductions, while supervisors outline mainly job duties. I am a mother of a lovely kid, and an avid fan technology, computing and management related topics. I hold a degree in MBA from well known management college in India. Orientation of Employee.

Succession Planning. Promotions of Employee. Employee Transfers. Purposes of Orientation. Employers have to realize that orientation isn't just a nice gesture put on by the organization.

It serves as an important element of the recruitment and retention process. Some key purposes are: To Reduce Startup Costs Proper orientation can help the employee get "up to speed" much more quickly, thereby reducing the costs associated with learning the job.

To Reduce Anxiety Any employee , when put into a new, strange situation, will experience anxiety that can impede his or her ability to learn to do the job. Proper orientation helps to reduce anxiety that results f rom entering into an unknown situation, and helps provide guidelines f or behavior and conduct, so the employee doesn't have to experience the stress of guessing.

To Reduce Employee Turnover. Employee turnover increases as employees feel they are not valued, or are put in positions where they can't possibly do their jobs.

Orientation shows that the organization values the employee, and helps provide the tools necessary for succeeding in the job. To Develop Realistic Job Expectations, Positive Attitudes and Job Satisfaction It is important that employees learn as soon as possible what is expected of them, and what to expect from others, in addition to learning about the values and attitudes of the organization.

While people can learn from experience, they will make many mistakes that are unnecessary and potentially damaging. Employee orientation imperative to control attrition: Poll. An effective orientation program is not a one day affair but an ongoing process which could continue up to six months of a person joining the organization.

Experts alleged that it is essential that employers should educate employees regarding their role, key result areas and organi z ations expectations in advance to curb attrition at the later stage, during a skills dialogue session, a series of high powered panel discussions organi z ed by TimesJobs.

It will help employees to understand why they are hired and what their goals are for the coming months. What is the goal of orientation? The overall goal of orientation is to help new employees learn about the organization as soon as possible, so that they can begin contributing. From the perspective of employers, the orientation process has several specific purposes, which are described next.