Employee Orientation and Training

Lecture 7
Purpose of Orientation
Orientation helps new employees
1. Feel welcome and at ease: Make the new employee feel welcome and at
home and part of the team.
2. Understand the organization: Help the new employee understand the
organization in a broad sense (its past, present, culture, and strategies and
vision of the future).
3. Know what is expected in work and behavior: Make sure the new employee
has the basic information to function effectively, such as e-mail access,
personnel policies and benefits, and what the employer expects in terms of
work behavior.
4. Begin the socialization process: Start the person on becoming socialized into
the firms culture, values, and ways of doing things.

The orientation process

1. Employee benefit information
2. Personnel policies
3. Daily routine
4. company organization and operations
5. Safety measures and regulations
6. Facilities tour

Why do organizations need training

Research suggests training has a direct positive impact on employees’ productivity
and organizational performance (Baer, 2018).

Training and Development

Training is a systematic process through which an organization’s human resources
gain knowledge and develop skills by instruction and practical activities that result
in improved corporate performance.
Development is a long term investment in human resources. Formal education,
job experiences, relationships and assessments of personality and abilities that
help employees prepare for the future.

Benefits of Training
1. Training = Up-skilling.
2. Maintains superior quality of products and services.
3. Achieves high service standards.
4. Provides information for new entrants on organizational know-hows.
5. Equips existing employees with the developing management skills,
knowledge and attitude.
6. Reduces mistakes, minimizing costs.
7. Opportunity for better communication, engagement and feedback.

Steps in Training Process

Consisted of 4 steps:
1. Need analysis: Analyze the training need
2. Design: Develop the course
3. Implement the program: Implement training by using methods (on-the-
job or online training)
5. Evaluate the training session: Evaluate the course’s effectiveness

Need Analysis
Analyzing training needs
Training needs analysis:
1. Task analysis: assessing new employees’ training needs. ANALYZING
NEW EMPLOYEES TRAINING NEEDS: A detailed study of a job to identify the
specific skills required.
2. Performance analysis: assessing current employees’ training needs.
Verifying that there is a performance deficiency and determining whether
that deficiency should be corrected through training or through some other
means (such as redesigning for motivation/ transfer).

Need Analysis: Performance

Assessing current employees’ training needs Managers use task analysis to
identify new employees training needs, and performance analysis to identify
current employees training needs.

Methods for identifying training needs:

1. Specialized software
2. Assessment center results
3. Individual diaries
4. Attitude surveys
5. Tests
6. Performance appraisals
 7. Job related performance data
8. Observations
9. Interviews
10.Can’t do or won’t do

Need Analysis: Performance

3 Criteria:
1. Performance Standard
2. Performance Evaluation
3. Can’t do/ Won’t do

Designing the Training Program

It focuses on 3 crucial elements:

1. Training objective
What is the actual need?
Example: To make 10 contracts per week

2. Sort the training budget out

Development cost
Direct and indirect cost
 3. Deciding on the actual content
- Online and offline content

Implement the Training Program

On-the-job training
Types of On-the-Job Training
◦ Coaching or understudy: most common
◦ Job rotation
◦ Special assignments

Advantages
Having a person learn a job by actually doing the job
Inexpensive
Immediate feedback

Off-the-job training
Takes place at a site away from actual environment
Could be expensive
Immediate feedback might not be available
On-the Job Training Methods
Apprenticeship training
A structured process by which people become skilled workers through a
combination of formal learning and long-term on-the-job training.
Example: Dofasco and Google conduct these programs

Informal learning
Employees learn on the job they learn through informal means, including
performing their jobs on a daily basis with their colleagues.

Job instruction training (JIT)

Listing each job’s basic tasks, along with key points, in order to provide step-by-
step training for employees.

Managerial on-the-Job Training

Job rotation: Moving a trainee from department to department to broaden
his or her experience and identify strong and weak points.

Coaching/Understudy approach
The trainee works directly with a senior manager or with the person he or she is
to replace; the latter is responsible for the trainee’s coaching

Off-the Job Training Methods

 1. Effective lectures: Lecturing is a quick and simple way to present
knowledge to large groups of trainees, as when the sales force needs to
learn a new product’s features.
2. Use the relevant content
3. Be alert to your audience
4. Maintain eye contact with the trainees
5. Make sure everyone in the room can hear
6. Control your hands
7. Talk from notes rather than from a script
8. Break a long talk into a series of five-minute talks
9. Keep your conclusions short

Off-the Job Training Methods

Programmed instruction (PI)
A step-by-step, self-learning that consists of 3 steps:
1. Presenting questions or facts to the learner
2. Allowing the person to respond
3. Giving the learner immediate feedback on the accuracy of his or her
answers

Advantages
1. Reduced training time
2. Self-paced learning
3. Immediate feedback
4. Reduced risk of error for learner
Audiovisual-based training
1. The extensive use of DVDs, films, PowerPoint and audio tapes
2. To illustrate following a sequence over time
3. To expose trainees to events not easily demonstrable in live lectures
4. To meet the need for organization-wide training and it is too costly to
move the trainers from place to place.

Simulated Learning (occasionally called vestibule training)

1. A method in which trainers learn on the actual equipment they will use on
the job
2. Training employees on special off-the-job equipment so training costs and
hazards can be reduced.
Simulated learning means different things to different people. A survey
asked training professionals what experiences qualified as simulated
learning experiences. Eg. Military.
* Virtual reality-type games, 19%
* Step-by-step animated guide, 8%
* Scenarios with questions and decision trees overlaying animation, 19%
* Online role-play with photos and videos, 14%
•Software training including screenshots with interactive requests, 35%
•* Other, 6%

Distance and Internet-Based Training Off-the

Job Training
Videoconferencing
Interactively training employees who are geographically separated from each
other—or from the trainer—via a combination of audio and visual equipment.
Video conferencing is a technology that allows users in different locations to hold
face-to-face meetings without having to move to a single location together.

Training via the Internet

Using the Internet or proprietary internal intranets to facilitate computer-based
training.
Web-based training (sometimes called e-learning) is anywhere, any-time
instruction delivered over the Internet or a corporate intranet to browser-
equipped learners.

Off-the-Job Management Training and Development

Techniques

Case study method

Managers are presented with a description of an organizational problem to
diagnose and solve.
A development method in which the manager is presented with a written
description of an organizational problem to diagnose and solve.

Outside seminars
Many companies and universities offer Web-based and traditional management
development seminars and conferences.

Behavior modeling
A training technique in which trainees are first shown good management
techniques in a film, are asked to play roles in a simulated
Modeling: showing trainees the right (or “model”) way of doing something.
1. Role playing: having trainees practice that way. A training technique in
which trainees act out parts in a realistic management situation.
2. Social reinforcement: giving feedback on the trainees’ performance.
3. Transfer of learning: Encouraging trainees apply their skills on the
job.

Corporate universities
Provides a means for conveniently coordinating all the company’s training efforts
and delivering Web-based modules that cover topics from strategic management
to mentoring.

In-house development centers

A company-based method for exposing prospective managers to realistic
exercises to develop improved management skills.

Evaluating the Training Effort

Designing the evaluation study
1. Time series design
2. Controlled experimentation

Training Effects to Measure – Training outcomes

◦ Reaction of trainees to the program
◦ Learning that actually took place
◦ Behavior that changed on the job
◦ Results achieved as a result of the training
Controlled Experimentations
1. A training group and a controlled group that receives no training
2. Data (e.g. quality of service and quantity of sales) for both groups is
collected before the group is exposed to training
3. The training group then receives the training while controlled group
receives no training
4. This makes it possible to determine the extent to which any change in the
training group’s performance

Making the Training Meaningful

1. Attract: Gains and maintains the trainees’ attention.
2. Relatable: Addressing the training content in a relatable and logical
manner.
3. Transferable: Making skills transfer obvious and easy.
4. Opportunity: Provides the trainees with adequate opportunity to
practice the skills being taught.
5. Appraisal: Provides the trainees with feedback on their performance.