Definition and Meaning
Orientation or induction refers to the process of introducing new hires to existing staff members and organisational procedures. The induction process includes all of the steps required in introducing a new applicant to the organisation and his department.
The only purpose of induction training is to introduce new employees to the company’s history, rules, and procedures regarding health and safety. Depending on the people and the businesses, this training is different. Regardless of size, the induction training programme must be carefully thought out and delivered in an organised, enticing, and beneficial way.
Each organisation should utilise the subject matter to fit well with individual needs. The key need for appropriate induction training is a legal one. Employers have a legal obligation to provide new hires with all pertinent training and information about the work, especially that which relates to health and safety.
Gary Dessler claims that “Orientation is a technique for giving new workers a fundamental background on the company.”
“Orientation is the process of intentional introduction of personnel to their employment,” says Robert L. Mathis.
Purpose of Induction
1) Formally Welcoming Workers: Management of many organisations views induction programmes as an occasion to formally welcome new employees via a formal process.
2) Overcoming First Unease and Hesitation: New hires often have initial trepidation about their employer. When this anxiety is not appropriately managed, it may lead to the development of a negative impression of the organisation, which eventually breeds animosity. Orientation makes it simple to deal with this first anxiety and hesitancy.
3) Information sharing: The company gives new hires the opportunity to learn about their position, department, organisation, and coworkers. For instance, the company may provide training and development programmes to improve career options and educate staff members about the growth opportunities accessible to them. In exchange, the company may learn more about the staff members’ backgrounds and personal career goals.
4) Evaluating Workers: Although the organisation had already evaluated the employees’ training requirements during the selection process, the induction process provides the organisation another opportunity to do so.
5) Acclimatizing Employees: Through induction programmes, an organisation is able to instruct new hires on the principles of their positions, the necessary safety measures, and other organisational services.
6) Managing the HR Cost: Without induction programmes, workers are forced to learn everything on their own, which might result in higher organisational learning costs due to resource waste and job disruptions. Similar to this, when workers’ expectations do not match reality, they may ultimately decide to leave the company. As a consequence, the cost of HR related to recruiting and selection rises as well.
7) Fostering Team Spirit: When an orientation programme is held for a group of new employees, it helps to foster team spirit among the coworkers. Additionally, by simulating collaboration in induction programmes, each member’s capacity to operate in a group may be assessed.
8) Socializing Workers: Socializing employees refers to instilling proper attitudes, beliefs, and standards in them so they can collaborate with both official and informal groups. With the aid of induction programmes, the workers develop this mandatory belief, value, and attitude.
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Types of Induction
1) Formal and Informal Orientation: Formal induction is a methodical way to acquaint new hires with the company, the nature of the job, and the working environment. The senior authorities often spend a lot of time on this procedure since it calls for them to research the requirements of new applicants and then meet those demands.
However, it pays off in the long term since it helps new hires make fewer errors while they’re working and fosters solid interpersonal relationships. The most qualified person to contact for various work-related issues is disclosed to new hires during the official orientation.
Officials from various levels, including the CEO, GM Functional or Departmental Heads, Senior Managers, Line Managers, etc., are engaged in this process. One benefit of a good orientation programme is that it may help a firm gain the workers’ trust early on while also making it simple for the staff to comprehend the organization’s culture, working circumstances, nature of job, etc.
It should be emphasised that the informal orientation process is rather ad hoc. Here, staff members familiarise themselves with the workplace via trial and error and personal experience. However, if the new hires don’t become acclimated to the company, they could feel overwhelmed and struggle to complete their duties effectively.
Because of this, people sometimes make blunders or have a tendency to quit their positions as soon as an opportunity arises. The rate of labour turnover will rise as a result of this. However, the business must also spend time and money on a new hiring procedure. Only if the workers stick with it and fully comprehend the organisation will the process be deemed useful.
2) Individual and Collective Orientation: The second decision hiring managers must make is whether to perform the orientation programme in groups or one-on-one. In contrast to group orientation, it is difficult to standardise the opinions of the many recruits when the candidates are orientated individually.
Because a person’s worldview, preferences, and dislikes are emphasised by an individual orientation. Individual orientation is a labor-intensive and costly process. Additionally, it provides little chance for new applicants to socialise with other recruiters.
Large organisations tend to favour collective induction methods, whereas tiny organisations, which require fewer people and hence favour individual induction methods, do not. However, the individual induction strategy is equally well-liked in big organisations, but only when they need to hire highly skilled specialists who must always be hired sparingly.
3) Serial or Disjunctive Orientation: A serial induction is when an experienced employee takes on the duty of educating the newly hired individual; he serves as a mentor, trainer, or role model for the new hires. Disjunctive induction is the word used to describe a situation when such a facility is not provided to the new hires and where there is no one to mentor and inspire them. Both types of induction have advantages and disadvantages.
Maintaining the current working environment and workplace traditions is made easier by serial induction. If this procedure is applied excessively, the business will always operate according to predetermined established standards, leaving little room for innovation or a forward-thinking perspective, and the number of new modifications will be minimal.
The workforce, especially those who are extremely creative and liberal, may oppose such a method in the future. Additionally, stressed-out staff often transfer their frustration to new hires in an organisation.
The disjunctive induction, on the other hand, does the exact opposite by encouraging workers’ innovative and imaginative efforts since new hires are not under any obligation to uphold the organization’s traditions and practises.
However, these improvements must be evaluated in light of a creative person’s skills as well as those who fail on their own as a result of a mentor’s lack of active assistance. The latter group often lacks knowledge on how to carry out their tasks and how doing so will help the organisation.
4) Investiture and Divestiture Orientation: The decision of utmost significance relates to whether to preserve and value a newly appointed person’s identity or to dismantle it in order to reconfigure it in accordance with the organisational necessity.
The Investiture Orientation confirms the crucial work-related traits of new employees. A person who is being considered for the position of an executive is always evaluated on the basis of the professional abilities and traits that he has while working. In general, all high profile appointments are founded on this principle.
Such a person is granted complete freedom, including the ability to choose the layout of his office, choose his employees, and make numerous administrative choices.
Diversification orientation, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of investiture orientation. This approach makes an effort to change the traits of the new recruits since they were chosen for their ability to perform well. By using this technique, he will become more likeable to the other workers and more suitable for the company.
When a candidate’s personality has evolved, he may sometimes need to let go of his previous personality characteristics and embrace a new perspective on his work, his coworkers, and the organization’s goals. To assess these new hires’ capacity for adapting to various circumstances, top authorities may even subject them to simulated humiliation and abuse.
These methods are also used when orienting new members of sports teams, the military, the police, etc. The fundamental idea behind these orientation tactics is to dislodge the newly appointed candidates’ previous, conservative thinking in order to more readily inculcate new standards of behaviour.
Process of Induction
1) General Orientation: The major goal of this stage is to make the employee feel at ease and encourage him to take the orientation process seriously so that he may quickly adapt to the organisation. Employees are also informed on the organization’s history, corporate goals, and procedures.
He is also taken on a tour of the whole organisation to learn about the operational procedures. In the beginning, classroom instruction is provided for a month, and then he should be put in their particular department as a trainee to get familiar with the procedures and comprehend the significance of each task for the outcome.
2) Departmental Orientation: The person is now given a tour of the division in which he must work. The new employee must be informed with his responsibilities and the department’s operational procedures as well as his position within them.
Within a few months, the new employee should be introduced to every aspect of the department’s operations. He must establish relationships with the superiors, coworkers, and subordinates throughout this procedure in order to be given a certain position.
3) Particular Work Orientation: The person is given a specific task and a job description. The employee must understand the procedure utilised for a particular task. Along with the job requirements, the newbie must be specifically informed of the responsibility associated in that particular task. If required, the superior should use a hand-holding strategy to guide the employee in carrying out the task at hand.
Methods / Techniques of Induction
1) Online orientation: It helps in providing new appointees with appropriate and valuable content and simple notes at any time or place. Therefore, new hires may readily get current and updated information on the organization’s goal, vision, values, and customs on their very first day.
Instead of waiting for the actual orientation session to begin, they may participate anytime, anyplace, in interactive learning activities. This approach has the potential to deliver orientation training to a workforce dispersed across many areas, maintain consistency and continuity in providing orientation training, and have no set start date for training applicants.
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2) Email: Email has gained popularity as an orientation tool since it can be used to provide information such as the first message instructing new hires on how to participate in online orientation or the weekly emails emphasising the culture or history of the organisation.
3) Videos: They used to be widely used, but as the internet and online orientation became more prevalent, their usage started to decline. Although creating movies for orientation programmes is now seen as optional, viewing corporate videos, television documentaries on organisations, firm advertisements, or award presentations might supplement an orientation programme. It is also gradually becoming trendy to include video clips in the online orientation session.
4) Orientation Kits: An organisation may provide orientation kits to new hires as a collection of useful materials in a portable manner. The orientation kits might be quite sophisticated, like a briefcase or a specialised carrier, or they can be as basic as a folder or an envelope. The following items are often included in the orientation kit:
i) A greetings letter
ii) A handbook for employees,
iii) Employees and their positions,
iv) The procedure for gaining access to online orientation materials,
v) product samples or brochures, and
vii) List of nearby facilities.
Importance of Induction
1) Lowers Labor Turnover: When an employee’s first few months of employment are marked by high labour turnover, the employee may be persuaded to leave the company by allowing them to form unfavourable impressions of their work during this period. By employing an efficient induction programme in the first stages of a new employee’s employment, labour turnover may be minimised.
2) Assists in fostering realistic employee expectations: During the induction programme, new hires are educated about the organization’s expectations of them as well as what incumbents may anticipate from the organisation. With the aid of an introduction programme, expectations may be lowered and grounded in reality.
3) Fosters Job Satisfaction and a Positive Attitude Toward the Company: An induction programme may foster positive attitudes toward the employer while also guaranteeing job satisfaction. With relation to corporate regulations and other employment practises, induction ensures that there is interpersonal contact with the new employee.
4) Help the New Employee Contribute to Organizational Success More Quickly: Another advantage of the induction programme for new workers is that they learn about the organization’s goals and yearly targets in addition to many other things. As a result, some individuals’ personal objectives will become organisational objectives. Some workers try a terrible method of reaching personal goals while at work.
Employees have the chance to develop these terrible habits via unsuccessful induction programmes. Therefore, organisations should alter how they use induction programmes to get good outcomes from these people. New hires will learn about their social responsibilities to the company during induction. For both management and employees, this will result in a productive work atmosphere.
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