Planning the Honeymoon

Planning the Honeymoon

 

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.”- B. Olatunji

 

New employees bring enthusiasm, new ideas, interest as well as their knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAOs). While top management shapes the culture through their actions, new staff adds to the mix bringing a fresh perspective. Making new hires feel welcome and getting them up to speed is the role of human resources through the training function or organizational development activities. The core motive of this process is to make the employee effective as early as possible and to reduce the learning curve.

 

All Aboard!

 

Just as the staffing function is planned and executed in steps to hire on the best talent, the next phase determines the success of that hire becoming integrated into the organization. The term “onboarding” is used to describe this period. It is a transition period for both the new team member and the coworkers. Organizations are focusing more on the onboarding process and designing more creative and exciting techniques in an effort to get their newly hired employees productive sooner and to lay the foundation that will help to retain them.

 

Interactive Activities

 

You want to plan a systematic process that engages, motivates, educates, automates and monitors. From forms to initial performance evaluation, you want to continue the sell the employee on the fact that they made the right decision with accepting the position. It can be a fragile period of getting to know each other and forming judgments! Coordinate a mix of activities with continuous feedback.

 

Social Security

 

As your new staff learns the company and their job, they adapt to the social environment. Working alone or on teams, in the building or teleworking, productivity increases when we feel a part of something larger than us. This leads to satisfaction and loyalty. New team members must be taught to see the organizational world as do their peers with more seniority if the traditions of the organization are to survive. The manner in which this occurs is referred to as the organizational socialization process.

 

Suggestion and Reflection

 

All employees, new and old, want to provide input to improve the organization. This is done both informally, such as one-to-one discussions with leaders (or, negatively, as gossip with coworkers) and formally, with surveys, conducted anonymously periodically. These surveys can be called opinion, attitude, engagement or satisfaction surveys. Who knows best how to better the operations? Another purpose is to determine levels of engagement and degrees of satisfaction. Simply conducting a formal survey will generate enthusiasm amongst the staff.

 

Ready? Set? Action!

 

Once the survey process is complete and the information is tabulated, it is analyzed. From this analysis, communications are planned to meet the level of the employee audiences to deliver the results. The employees will be interested to learn these results and offer specific suggestions for areas of weakness.

 

The completion of the survey project must include the development of action plans to work on the areas identified as needing improvement. Typically, these plans are created from both employee and managerial recommendations, priced out and approved by top management. The progress made implementing the actions identified in the approved plans is then communicated to the affected staff.

 

Organizational development interventions are sometimes used and other times policy changes are made. “Interventions” are principal learning processes in the “action” stage of organizational development. Progress made must be realistic, not everything can be fixed following a survey and not everyone will be happy, there are always time and money constraints. 

 

Additional Materials

 

Do We Want the Lady or the Tiger?

Employers Unresponsive to Employee Needs, Survey Finds.

Employee Survey Action Planning Instruction

A Change Is Gonna Come – Seal

 

ASSIGNMENT:

 

Using the resources in your Reading area, as well as further research, read about successful onboarding programs conducted by a few of the large, successful and admired corporations. In a 3 page report, explain your selected Fortune 500 company’s program; then compare and contrast it to one other Fortune 500 company from your readings. Conclude with which program you think is more effective and creative.

 

This paper should be 3 pages of complete content (cover page and reference page are separate) and have in-text citations. The paper will be in APA style (both in formatting the paper and reference page). One scholarly article as a minimum should be included in the paper.