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It’s Only Common Sense: Orienting New Hires Toward a Successful Future

For the past several weeks, I have been writing about the process for finding and hiring the right candidate. Now that you have spent so much time and effort in that process, and you’ve made the hire, the next step is to make sure they have a proper orientation to both your company and the wider industry.

The sample training program I propose below is, of course, focused on the electronics manufacturing industry, but it can be applicable to all employees.

The industry: The first, and perhaps most important, part of this training plan is the orientation. You need to educate this person on our industry, including the history and overall importance to the world. You’ll want to include examples of the kinds of groundbreaking and lasting contributions our industry has made, including how specific products developed and produced by our industry have contributed to other world-changing products built over the past few decades. Make a point of instilling pride of product into your new hires.

Your company: After giving your new hire a thorough overview of our industry and its significance, introduce your new hire to your specific company by talking about your its history. Share your company story with them, including the hard times and the challenges you faced getting the company started. Every company has a cultural lore that should be passed on to new members of your company’s work family.

Your culture: Orient the new employee to your company’s mission, culture, and philosophy. Teach them what “great customer service” means in your company. This would be a good time to have your sales and marketing manager discuss your company’s outward presentation with the new hire, specifically your advertising, messaging, and your branding. It’s important that every single person in your company be fluent with your company’s marketing message.

Mentorship: If you are truly serious about making sure that each new employee is fully and properly trained, you should consider starting a mentorship program where each new employee gets a trained mentor to help them on their journey. Such programs not only benefit the new employee, but the mentor as well.

Your product: Teach the new employee all about your product, not only what it is and what it does, but how it is built. I know of some smart companies who have experienced a great deal of success by having their new hires spend a week or two fabricating products in a factory with their own two hands. Getting hands-on experience ensures new employees have a strong understanding of both the product and the manufacturing process—proving that this is always time well spent.

Career path: You want your new employee to feel they have a future with your company and your industry, so spend time telling them about some of your employees’ success stories. Make a point of showing them where they can be in five years by having them spend one-on-one time with some of your more successful employees. It is vitally important to show them their future with your company, as this is a significant step in developing strong and committed employees for life.

Specific job training: One you’ve familiarized your new hire with your industry, company and its products, as well as their potential career trajectory, it’s time to train them for the job they were hired to do. Make sure that you have ISO and AS 9100-sanctioned/certified training programs and that you have the right people running those programs. It’s important to teach the new hire not only what they have to do, but (even more importantly) why they have to do it. Once again, talk about your company culture regarding process and quality controls. Make sure the new employee gets a complete understanding of what their department does and how their department relates to other departments. You want your new hire to understand the importance of teamwork, as well as how their actual customer is likely another department in the company. They should have a complete understanding of what their customer—the next department in the process—needs from them.

Frequent checks and evaluations: The new employee needs to receive instant feedback to make sure that they understand whether they are doing a good job. They should be constantly evaluated to understand whether they are being training properly (which is why this phase is called “training” rather than “teaching”). Early on, they should experience monthly (or more frequent) evaluation meetings. This is the time to check in with their peers, make sure they are doing things right, that they are headed in the right direction, and that their skills and capabilities are being assessed with their career path in mind.

Review, reviews, reviews: Why are we all so bad about doing reviews? For some reason, reviews have become associated with raises, so if a company is going through a wage freeze, they tend to also go through a review freeze. Big mistake: Face-to-face, regularly scheduled reviews are incredibly important. The real purpose of a review is to make sure the employee is doing okay, as well to discuss if anything needs correcting or adjusting. Reviews are also the time to talk about the employee’s future with the company. What are their dreams and aspirations? What position are they striving for in the company? As their boss, you need to guide them on the path to that significant future they’re hoping for within the company.

If you do everything listed here, and you do it with both the proper attention and intention, you will greatly reduce your future labor problems.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.