Employee Orientation and Management

Orientation and Career Management

Employee Orientation and Management

Employee Orientation: Q1. Orienting new employees serves several critical functions for an organization. First and foremost, it ensures that employees have the practical skills to function at their new jobs. Even if employees have previous experience, education, and training in the workplace, there are specific skills particular to the organization for every new job that must be learned. Orientation kick-starts the learning process. Even more importantly, orientation grounds employees in the culture of the organization. Being a good fit for the organization's culture is often equally as important as possessing specific skills. While most organizations take this into consideration when hiring new employees, it will always take a period of time for employees to acclimate and become part of the 'team.' For some organizations, such as Zappos.com, the importance of an organizational fit is so great that employees are offered a 'bonus' during training to quit, to ensure employees with second thoughts do not remain at the organization and cost Zappos additional time and money (Bruce 2011).

Q2. A formal orientation is essential. Supervisors may know the expectations for their department, but that does not mean they are well-versed in areas such as sexual harassment law and sensitivity training, which are both critical issues to include in any employee orientation. An individualistic orientation also does not create the all-important team bonding that ensures the organization will be cohesive and have a common sense of shared values and ideas. The concept of 'hiring for culture' means little unless employees understand what that culture means from day 1 (Bruce 2011). A collective, formal orientation also allows workers from different departments to meet one another and work together and gives them a sense of how their task fits into the work of the larger organization. And finally, a collective, formal orientation will give new employees a chance to ask important questions about vacation time, benefits, retirement plans, and other issues that are often time-consuming to explain. It is far easier to attend to such issues in the beginning rather than waste time once the employee has begun to work, and merely referring the employee to the employee handbook runs the risk of confusing the worker.

Career Management: Q1. Ultimately, the employee is responsible for managing his or her own career. If an employee feels dissatisfied and unchallenged, he or she should seek out new opportunities by either looking for new work or talking to his or her supervisor; seeking additional education; or pursuing other options elsewhere. Employees must keep abreast of developments in their fields by seeking out membership in professional organizations, networking, and looking for additional formal or informal training to ensure their skill sets remains relevant. Employees must be aware that their interests and the interests of the organization where they are currently working and not necessarily perfectly aligned, and cannot simply passively wait at their desks, hoping that conditions improve or that things will stay the same in the industry and require no additional labor or education on the part of the worker.