Has this ever happened to you? You’re excited about your new job, and you show up on your first day of work only to be greeted with, “Who are you?” or maybe “Here, throw on this uniform and get working!”

This “welcome” of new employees speaks volumes about your organization and how it treats its customers. How you treat your employees is how they will treat your customers. Therefore, it is vital to have some form of a new employee orientation to indoctrinate them into the culture, the story (history), the basic principles, the organizational language, and to share the organization’s mission, vision, and values. For large companies, it needs to be formal, but even small companies should have some form of orientation. When else do you have an opportunity to set the tone and share this stuff?

What do you think is the #1 goal of New Employee Orientation?

The answer may not be your first thought… It is to make new hires feel welcome. They should feel like you’ve been expecting them. They should feel like they are important and special, and a new member of your family. The return on this investment in your #1 asset is substantial.