The New Year is a perfect time to evaluate your new hire orientation program to ensure it is still effective and still meets the needs of new hires and the organization.
Consider these ways to evaluate the program:
- Review the objectives of the program against the organization’s current vision, mission and long-term strategic goals. Does the program help the organization achieve the vision, mission and long-term goals?
- If available, evaluate surveys from past orientation programs to determine what is working and where changes should be made.
- Survey, meet with or utilize focus groups to gather data from department and division heads. What benefits do they see from the new hire orientation program?
- Survey, meet with or utilize focus groups to gather data from new hires who joined the organization in the last year or two. What benefit did they receive from the new hire orientation program? What additional information would they have liked to have received that would have helped them to be more effective in their roles?
- Research what other similar organizations are doing in their new hire orientation program. Research best practices in new hire orientation programs.
Consider forming an evaluation team in order to evaluate the effectiveness of your new hire orientation program. The evaluation team will be responsible for gathering information and data and proposing changes to increase the effectiveness of the program.
