How Does Employee Onboarding Differ From Employee Orientation?
Starting a new job can be equally exciting and nerve-wracking for a new employee. Regardless of their prior experience and overall knowledge, walking into a new workplace and being expected to know everything is unrealistic and can cause significant stress to new hires. For this reason, as well as many others, undergoing onboarding and orientation as soon as they assume their new position is essential. Although these two terms are often used interchangeably, there certainly are differences between onboarding and orientation that you need to be aware of. This article delves into these processes, exploring their benefits, clarifying how one differs from the other, and offering best practices for their implementation.
What Is Employee Orientation?
Employee orientation refers to the initial introduction of an employee to their new workplace. During this process, new hires are introduced to the organization's policies, culture, and history, familiarize themselves with procedures and job roles, complete necessary paperwork, and meet their colleagues and supervisors. This way, they get acclimated to their new environment and receive the basic knowledge they need to be productive as quickly as possible.
Benefits Of Employee Orientation
Employee orientation has several benefits, perhaps the most important being improved productivity. Orientation gives employees the tools they need to immediately start being productive in their new positions and bring value to the organization. At the same time, feeling supported from day one boosts engagement levels, motivating employees to put their best foot forward. As a result, retention rates are also significantly higher, as employees are more likely to stick with an organization that provides ample support and training. Moreover, orientation promotes a deeper and more adequate understanding of the corporate culture, speeding up the integration of new employees and helping them connect with their colleagues. Lastly, orientation significantly reduces the stress and anxiety often associated with starting a new job, providing clarity when new employees most need it.
What Is Employee Onboarding?
Employee onboarding refers to a comprehensive process designed to assist new employees in transitioning into a new role. It involves numerous steps and stages, such as role-specific training, cultural immersion, company integration, and essential administrative tasks. By design, onboarding can take a long time to conclude, ranging from a few months up to a full year. The ultimate purpose of onboarding is for employees to fully integrate into their new work environment and be equipped with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to succeed.
Benefits Of Employee Onboarding
Onboarding is a truly beneficial process for companies and their employees alike, maximizing the work experience in numerous ways. Similar to employee orientation, onboarding has a particularly positive effect on employee engagement and productivity. A well-structured onboarding process will not only make new hires feel valued and supported but also empower them to approach their new roles with confidence and initiative. Additionally, onboarding improves the employee experience by clarifying expectations and helping them set goals that will support their development while remaining aligned with the company's mission and vision. Finally, it's important to remember that a comprehensive onboarding strategy ensures compliance with legal requirements, safety protocols, and internal processes, thus reducing the risk of mistakes and potential legal consequences.
Employee Onboarding Vs. Orientation
When focusing only on their definitions, it might seem like employee orientation and onboarding are rather similar processes. However, it only takes looking a little deeper into how they work to understand that there are indeed differences between them. Let's see what those are.
Purpose
A key factor when talking about onboarding vs orientation is the overall purpose they serve. Starting with orientation, it aims to introduce employees to their new company and role, providing essential information about the culture, policies, procedures, and initial role-specific expectations. It is meant to welcome employees into their new work environment and make them feel comfortable. On the other hand, onboarding is more focused on aligning the new employee's needs, goals, and expectations with the company's overall culture as well as mission and vision. Through a long process of training and immersion, onboarding seeks to fully prepare new hires to excel in their new positions.
Duration
The time it takes to complete each of these processes truly sets them apart. Orientation is typically a one-time event that lasts anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. In contrast, onboarding is a particularly lengthy and detailed process that—depending on the company and the complexity of the role—can last from a few weeks or months to almost a year.
Focus
As mentioned earlier, orientation and onboarding focus on different aspects of the work experience, with the former being more general and the latter more detailed. Specifically, orientation focuses on general information about the company, the department, and the specific role, giving the new hire a high-level overview of the organization. Onboarding, however, dives deep into job-specific training, organizational culture and mission, team dynamics, relationship building, goals and expectations, as well as cultural integration.
Format
The brief and general nature of employee orientation means that the majority of the information is shared through presentations, videos, and written materials. These standardized resources ensure that all new hires get a uniform introduction to the organization and the essential information they need to know. Due to its duration and complexity, the resources used for onboarding are more diverse. Its format can include anything from formal and informal meetings with supervisors and HR to training sessions, presentations, mentoring, team-building activities, feedback sessions, and more.
What's Involved
Finally, the steps completed during each process differ significantly. During orientation, employees are welcomed to the company by their direct supervisor and perhaps the HR rep, receive an overview of the company's culture, values, mission, and vision, explore some of the basic policies and procedures they need to know about, complete necessary paperwork and set up their accounts, and finally meet their team members and employees from other departments. Onboarding focuses on role-specific training, goal setting and alignment with company strategic objectives, setting expectations, regular feedback sessions, ongoing mentoring and support, cultural integration and relationship-building activities, and plans for long-term engagement and development.
Tips For New Employee Orientation And Onboarding
How can you make onboarding and orientation more engaging and effective for your employees? Here are some tips to get it right.
Make It Fun
The fact that orientation and onboarding are corporate processes doesn't mean they can't be enjoyable for employees. In fact, introducing an element of lightness and entertainment can lead to higher levels of engagement and better overall results. But how can you make the introduction to the workplace fun? First, make sure to incorporate interactive elements throughout the process, such as games, team-building activities, and group discussions. Or, you can add multimedia such as videos, quizzes, and simulations to break up the monotony of written materials. Finally, celebrate important milestones and recognize your employees' progress.
Ask For Feedback
Orientation and onboarding are collaborative processes that need to involve the employee actively. What we mean by that is that you need to continuously check in with new hires to assess how their integration is progressing, gather feedback on what they think about the orientation and/or onboarding process, and determine if any adjustments are needed for better results and higher satisfaction. To achieve that, you need to conduct surveys, hold informal one-on-one meetings, and provide various communication channels. Most importantly, foster an open and trusting environment that motivates employees to voice their opinions and concerns.
Keep Evolving
A successful company makes sure to stay up to date with the latest trends in its industry so that it can adapt its processes accordingly. The same applies to your organization's onboarding and orientation strategy. It is essential that you keep up with the latest best practices, such as implementing virtual onboarding or using simulations to maximize training outcomes. Feedback from new hires can also be valuable for the continuous improvement of these processes. Moreover, establishing metrics that you regularly measure will reveal the effectiveness of your onboarding and orientation strategies and highlight ways to maximize their results.
Involve More People
Organizations often believe that onboarding and orientation should only involve the new hire, their direct manager, and the HR department. However, if you want to make the most of these processes, it's best to create a larger support system for employees. For example, you might think that employees can interact with other departments later on, but the sooner this happens, the more comprehensive their understanding of the company will be. Moreover, you can establish a buddy system, assigning a team member to teach the new hire the ins and outs of the team. This way, new employees will enjoy a sense of belonging and community that will enhance their engagement.
Develop Standard Processes
Although we talked about the significance of including the new hire in onboarding and orientation and taking their input into consideration, you still need to have standard processes in place. Namely, you must establish checklists and use standardized materials, especially for things like company policies and compliance. If you have a point of reference, it will be easier to streamline the process by including the steps that best suit your organizational needs and adjust as needed. Additionally, consider investing in onboarding software that will help you automate repetitive tasks, leaving more time for developing activities that keep new hires happy and engaged.
Avoid Making It Overwhelming
It is understandable that you have a lot of ground to cover during the early stages of a new hire's employment. However, if you try to cram all of it into one session or training module, you risk overwhelming and confusing your employees. It is important to prioritize the content and break it down into smaller training and informational sessions, giving employees adequate time in between to comprehend it. Informal conversations can also support comprehension and provide much-needed breaks. Lastly, you can create a resource library where employees can freely access and revisit any information they need, whenever they need it.
Conclusion
In the business world, orientation and onboarding are often confused for the same thing. Yet, these equally important processes serve different purposes and should be viewed as separate concepts. Orientation is a brief and high-level introduction to the new environment, while onboarding takes a deep dive into the organization and the role, thoroughly preparing new hires for their new responsibilities. By understanding the differences of onboarding vs orientation, you can maximize their effectiveness, creating an engaging and valuable first impression for new employees and helping them bring value to your organization.
