You know when you get so comfortable with something that you stop paying attention? Quick, tell me what leg of your pants you put in first when putting on your pants? See! You’re an idiot and you just reached down to act like you were putting on your pants because you had to know the answer. The reality is you didn’t know because it’s something we do every day and we no longer pay attention to this simple detail.
I was traveling recently when this hit me. Our lovely, overly flamboyant, flight attendant — by the way, I love it when the flight attendants are overly flamboyant, it somehow makes me feel safer and more fabulous…but that’s for a later post — was going through his pre-flight routine, similar to this (here), but more corporate.
I wasn’t paying attention, knowing where my life vest was and how to put on my mask first before assisting the overly sweaty guy next to me. I started feeling bad for not paying closer attention, not because I wanted to, but because I felt for this person doing their job and the average effort they were putting into it. I mean when that guy at Chipotle is doing his job average of putting my burrito together I sure as hell am paying attention to him!
That’s when it hit me. We (HR Pros) do new hire orientation like pre-flight safety instructions. We put together all the right information, script it out fairly well and then we put in our average effort — not because we’re average — but because it’s average information to us. We get it, we put it together, we understand it, we bought the t-shirt. Think about it. When was the last time you sat through a new hire orientation where you didn’t want to shoot yourself 15 minutes into Fred from Risk Management’s explanation of OSHA certification logs? All of this and we expect our new employees to listen to this average effort and actually make eye contact and be engaged.
You want to know what to do? Have non-HR folks do new hire orientation and don’t allow them to present their own area of expertise. Why will this work? Because if you were told you had to give an operations presentation right now as a HR Pro, you would be challenged, you would be nervous, your heart rate would go up a little bit — you would probably spend a little time getting to know the material, ask a lot of questions, and in the end provide a fairly decent presentation on what someone would really have to know about Ops — that wasn’t part of Ops — would have to know. The real stuff, and you would seem interested, because it’s new to you.
So, please put back your tray table and bring your seat to their upright position — it’s time to change things up.
Tim Sackett is the Executive Vice President for HRU Technical Resources and a regular contributor to the blog Fistful of Talent. He is awesome.
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That’s kind of like my approach to writing training and organizational documentation. I have someone who knows nothing about the thing I’m writing up read it and try the process. Explain it like they are four (sort of).
Okay– I get the “more enthusiasm in the work place is a good thing” point– but isn’t something that’s inherently average be left as being average? I mean— should I wear a clown hat while washing dishes or doing laundry?? Redundant, procedural activities just need to be blindly taken care of (average or not) in HR– so the new-hire can get to what they were hired for as quickly as possible.
On-boarding is the start of the retention process. Getting non-HR people involved is a great idea – I like your let’s not just fly by auto-pilot thinking.
As a trainer I have always tried to bring others into the new hire learning process; by bring non-HR, non-trainers into the process the new hires feel that they are getting info “direct from the horse’s mouth.” It also does wonders for the moral of the existing employees, especially those who participate.
I have never tried the “not their area of expertise” method. While it could be interesting, I think one would have to be very careful about who is chosen to do this as it would require a lot of prep work/oversight (something I often don’t have time to do – hold someone else’s hands while they learn to train on something they don’t know much about); otherwise it could end up with the new hires being misinformed.
A bad training (or orientation) session could be far worse than none at all.
I keep my portion of orientation to the bare minimum. I-9, here’s your benefit info, copies of all those policies I need to point out (briefly) for legal compliance, ask me if you have questions, and I’ll check in with you later to see how you’re doing. Then they spend the rest of the orientation (4 days) meeting with different employees, some management, some not, to get a sense of who does what since we’re a multi-discipline firm. The longest they’ll spend with in any orientation session is one hour, tops, since we want their sessions to be interactive discussions, not lectures on Here’s What I Do. I went through this orientation myself several years ago, and it was invaluable. Even if I didn’t retain all the information, I learned in only a few days who the major players were, and which relationships I needed to focus on first for various aspects of my job, or even who to go to for questions on specific issues.
I don’t think we’d ever switch it up and have people talk about their non-expertise since those early communications need to be consistent. It’s true that it would force people to learn what they don’t know in order to present, but I’ve found that when people get nervous, they just start making up stuff so they don’t look stupid. I think there’s too much risk for implied contract there.
I started a new gig. Never met the hr generalist before – had only talked to her on the phone. Her phone skills- tragic. At best. When I met her- even more tragic. I hate to say this but it’s true- she looked like something that a cat barfed up. At best. Completely disinterested in ANYTHING she had to say except for when she delighted in telling me that you can wear jeans everyday if you want! (a healthcare IT shop) And she told me I was over dressed- in a nice pair of black slacks, lovely blouse and a cardigan. And she’s a HR generalist – a front line representative of the company. In tatters. But looked like she combed her hair.
It was a challenge for me to go through that – I have worked on the hr side and developed meaningful and engaging orientation and on boarding programs for companies that were fabulous and participants loved and raved about, but then they were turned over to managers who, after the first few weeks, didn’t represent the company very well based on what the orientation program entailed. It’s hard to control, if you will. I think orientation and on-boarding is a tough nut to crack, to get (some) generalists to give a flip, to engage execs who think it’s a great idea and then don’t allow their schedules the flexibility to commit to do dog-and-ponies, and managers post-hire willing or able to buy in.
Orientation is not always reflective of the company and the work. Wouldn’t it be nice though? And if it were a true reflection and measure – what a completely different work world we would experience. For better or for worse.
Oy.
Try this clip for lighter view of airplane instructions -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Mq9HAE62Y
It gives a whole new meaning to being ‘transparent”
What is great about your suggested approach is that it’s a great opportunity for the non-HR folks to better understand policies- by teaching them. And it’s refreshing for new hires, who likely appreciate the change of pace and the “real-ness” of the orientation delivered by people in different parts of the business.
And I’d offer another idea as well: use the orientation as an opportunity to let the non-HR folks hear from the new hires. One of my clients was a 20+ year VP who made it a practice to interview all new hires within three weeks after their start dates. She wanted to know what it was like to work in her company- she would tell them she had long since lost the ability to see the culture objectively so she used these interviews to assess a variety of things. Pretty smart, right? Let the non-HR “civilians” lead these conversations and hear the feedback and input of the freshest eyes in the building.
And hopefully they won’t need the airsickness bags.
Fantastic idea.
I was never employed in HR. Yet, I volunteered (with others from our agency) to do New Hire Orientation. We worked in teams of two and conducted orientation that lasted for 6 hours or so. However, we could each speak about our own experiences at this agency and put some “real” perspective into life at this employer. We used interactive vehicles to get our attendees involved and we had some contests and awarded the winners a candy bar or something small. We had hard candy on the tables in front of attendees and we got great evaluations (overall).
I have also attended On-boarding orientation conducted by HR, that went on for two days and covered areas and department policies having nothing to do with my own responsibilities. It was brutal!
Good comments and thoughts have been written about here. Thanks!
Amen. But it’s a message that takes some delicacy in delivery, as one doesn’t want to undermine “subject matter expertise” for many aspects of the gig.
I work for a company best known for entertainment products – games like YOU DON’T KNOW JACK – that developed a benefits education tool that uses humor, interactivity, and a virtual gameshow host to explain benefits in humanspeak (need a sexier word for talking in words that Regular Folks can understand). And we’re getting data in terms of user feedback, completion rates, and increased participation in key voluntary programs, like FSAs, that suggests you’re right on (www.jellyvisionbenefitscounselor.com if you want to kick the tires).
Thanks for a great post.
PS Right leg first. Every time.