New Hire Orientation That Installs the Culture You Actually Have (Not the One on the Website)

Most new-hire orientations install the culture the HR deck describes — our values, our mission, our commitment to collaboration. That version of the culture lasts about three weeks. Then the new hire experiences the actual culture (the one encoded in Monday-morning meetings, how decisions get made, who gets heard, what really happens when someone pushes back) and the orientation-deck version starts to feel like marketing. The gap erodes trust faster than any onboarding gimmick repairs it.

A better orientation installs the culture that actually exists — including the parts that are not on the website. What decisions happen in Slack vs meetings. How dissent is handled when it is inconvenient. Who to call when the system breaks at 9pm. What this company is bad at (every company is bad at something; saying it out loud signals honesty, not weakness). When new hires learn the real version on day one, they recognize it on day 30 and contribute to it on day 90 instead of feeling sold.

Below is the design pattern for an orientation that installs the real culture, five specific exercises that surface the actual culture without drifting into confessional, and why the Learn2 participant-driven approach (new hires co-create their own orientation from team interviews) outperforms the content-delivery orientation every time.

Think back to your first day at a new job. Were you greeted with mountains of forms to fill out, lame meetings on company policy, and about a million new passwords to set up? A bad first impression of a new role may influence whether new employees stay with your company. In fact, studies show that many workers make this decision in the first few months of work. Why not make your new hire orientation an exciting, dynamic activity that really breaks the ice? Whether you are aiming to encourage collaboration between new and current employees, or inspire your entire team to meet new benchmarks, a fun, experiential learning workshops can be an effective way to meet your objectives and onboard a new team. To help you decide on the right new hire orientation activities, we’ve paired our most commonly client requests with popular workshops that work:

“I WANT TO INSPIRE BETTER COLLABORATION BETWEEN NEW AND CURRENT EMPLOYEES.”

Try our team-building exercise called Connect & Collaborate. While some employees are probably already sharing best practices on an informal basis, this activity is ideal for engaging everyone from the green intern to the most senior staff. This activity is especially helpful for orientations, where you want to encourage sharing of best practices to support new hires.

“I WANT NEW STAFF TO FEEL PART OF THE TEAM.”

Consider Bridge the Gap. In this workshop, employees work together to build a plan for the entire office, bridging the gap from where you are now, to where you want to be. Trust us – you’ll split your sides laughing when teams attempt to illustrate organizational gaps using tanks, police, dinosaurs and more! Learning about the goals of each department, you’ll create a common action plan that everyone can own. We’ll also share some indispensable techniques on how to encourage creative problem-solving and idea generation with “Yes, and…” circle exercises.

“I NEED TO ENCOURAGE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN TEAM MEMBERS.”

Communicate Naturally could be the right workshop for you. This is a great first step that enables an entirely new team to really get to know each other. The learning is centered around individuals understanding their own communications preferences, which gives them a better filter on how to understand their interactions with others. Demanding active participation and full of laughter, the insight gained in this workshop provides a foundation for selling, leading, coaching and many other applications.

“I WANT TO CHALLENGE MY TEAM TO ACHIEVE BIG RESULTS.”

Try Inspire the Future. In this workshop, we’ll take your team from releasing the past, to identifying present needs. From there, we’ll support you to create a unified program to produce amazing results, with quarterly check points to benchmark your progress. Ready to inspire your team to change the world? This is the place to start.

Onboarding vs New Employee Orientation: What Is the Difference?

Orientation is an event. Onboarding is a process. Orientation covers the first day or week: the tour, the paperwork, the introductions. Onboarding runs for the first three to twelve months, until the new hire can do the job and knows how the place really works.

Most companies treat orientation as if it were the whole of onboarding. That is where the culture gap opens. Orientation tells new hires what the company says it values. Onboarding is where they find out what it actually rewards. When the two match, people stay. For the longer process, see our top five tips for employee onboarding.

Five Exercises That Surface the Real Culture

These are the five exercises promised at the top of this page. In each one, new hires find the culture themselves, from the people who live it.

1. The team interview. Give each new hire three questions to ask five colleagues. What gets you praised here? What gets you in trouble? What do you wish you had known in week one? They bring back what they heard and compare notes.

2. The decision map. Pick one recent decision. Have the new hires trace who was asked, who decided, and where it was announced. It shows how decisions really move, which no org chart does.

3. The honest weakness. A senior leader names one thing the company is bad at and what is being done about it. Saying it out loud buys more trust than any values slide.

4. The 9pm list. New hires build their own list of who to call when something breaks after hours, by asking around. Along the way they meet the people who actually hold the place together.

5. The co-created agenda. After the interviews, the new hires design the rest of their own orientation from what they found. People own what they build. This is participant-driven learning development applied to a new hire’s first week.

New Hire Orientation Questions

What is the difference between onboarding and new employee orientation?

Orientation is the first day or week of welcome, paperwork and introductions. Onboarding is the whole process of getting a new hire fully productive, and it usually runs three to twelve months. Orientation is one step inside onboarding.

What makes a good new hire training program?

A good one gets new hires doing real work early and lets them find the culture for themselves. It pairs them with colleagues, not slides. It checks in at 30, 60 and 90 days. And it tells the truth about how the company works, including the parts that are not on the website.

How long should new employee orientation last?

One to five days is typical for orientation itself. The rest belongs to onboarding. Spread the content out. A new hire who gets everything on day one remembers very little of it by day five.

What are new employee orientation best practices?

Send the paperwork before day one. Give each new hire a buddy. Let them meet the people they will work with, not just HR. Show them how decisions really get made. Then ask them, at the end of week one, what surprised them.

ONBOARDING SOLUTIONS SINCE 1989

Contact us today to talk to one of our solutions leaders. Find out how our programs have been helping organizations with new hire orientation for more than 2 decades.