Question

Summarize the purpose and process of employee orientation?

Answer 1

When an employee joins a new organisation, he or she is introduced to the new company’s work environment, colleagues, systems, processes, policies, etc. through employee orientation programme. Orientation enable employees to understand their job profile, reduce their anxiety, understand what organisation expects them to do and what they can expect from the job and the organisation. Orientation is basically an introductory stage in the journey of an employee in the organisation that he or she joins and provide many benefits for both the employee as well as the employer. All employees joining a new organisation comes from different cultural, educational and geographical backgrounds, orientation helps these employees to mould and adapt to the working style and code of conduct of the new organisation, and ensures a smooth transition into the new workplace for all the stakeholders. Today, almost every organisation offers orientation in some form or the other that caters to the uncertainties, anxiety and needs of all the individuals.

Some of the key purposes that employee orientation addresses are - to reduce start up costs, to mould the new employees in the organisation’s culture and make them aware about the way of functioning in the organisation, to help new employees develop realistic job expectations, to help them understand about their day-to-day functions and learn about the values and attitudes, shared beliefs and code of ethics of the organisation. By being a part of a well designed and structured orientation programme, employees can get “up to speed” much more quickly and demonstrate learning the job skills.

Orientation process varies from organisation to organisation and it depends on the human resource managers, hiring managers and other strategic managers to understand the need of their organisation and the skill-set and knowledge they want to have in the new employees filling the vacant positions in the company. Among the vast amount of information that can be a part of the orientation process, a common composition of orientation process that is widely used in variety of organisations is:

- Employee benefit information

- Personnel policies

- Daily routine

- Company organisations and operations

- Safety measures and regulations

- Facilities tour