Bringing New Hires Up to Speed

Abstract

The following hypothetical human resources issue has, like so many of its ilk, no correct solution. To help your colleagues deal with such a situation, please tell us how you would resolve it. We'll print as many as space permits. The Editor Evers, XYZ's R&D vice president, and Gettings, its personnel director, were reviewing the R&D organization's annual performance appraisals. The year had been a good one for R&D--its annual budget had been hiked and the increase used to hire several promising engineers. Tom was particularly interested in examining the appraisals of the new hires to see how successful R&D had been in acquiring talent and making people productive in their first year on the job. Most of the appraisals were just satisfactory, but there were two exceptions: the two new hires in the Electronics Research Department had been rated achievers. Department head Bateman expressed surprise at such high ratings for the first year on the job and wondered whether he had over-rated the two individuals. thought the same thing and did some further checking, said Pete. These two people did achieve a lot in their first year. One of them in particular accomplished some research results that will probably lead to a key patent for us. I'm quite certain the ratings valid. In that case, Tom asked, are these two just that much better than the rest of the new hires or is Bob doing something special to 'get them up to speed'? We haven't had many new hires recently because we have gone through an era of tight budgets, Pete replied. We really have no specified program for bringing new employees up to speed. For new hires, I do a general orientation--company policies, organizational rules, hours the lab operates, security procedures, pay, dress code, etc. Everything else in the way of introduction to the actual work and results expected is left up to the individual department head. Tom Calls a Meeting Tom thought a few moments and decided to have making new employees productive quickly the subject of a special staff meeting and see if his managers could agree on the best approach to take. Initially, newcomers a drain on productivity, drawing a salary, incurring training and orientation expenses, and consuming co-workers' time--all without providing much in return. But in today's competitive environment, XYZ would have to treat the cost of making new employees productive as a luxury and try to reduce those costs. Tom opened the special staff meeting by observing, Over the past few years of lean budgets we haven't had many new hires and don't really have a generally-agreed-on procedure for the best way to make them productive. We've left it to each of you to devise your own system--I'd like to hear your ideas on what you do, what works and what doesn't, and see if we can agree on a best approach for all departments. What your thoughts ...? Mike Hubbard, manager of Mechanical Engineering Research, responded immediately: We pay these new hires very good salaries--a lot more than I made when I was new! I want to make sure quickly that they really can earn it, and so I assign an individual project to assess the individual's ability. I give just a minimum orientation on what resources they have available to them and what my expectations are. I've got to admit this didn't work well with my two new hires this year. They were good theoreticians but couldn't handle the practical aspects of their assignments. The experimental equipment they designed was impractical and didn't produce any results! I've got to change their assignments to find some way to make them more productive. I'm anxious to know if any of my cohorts have a better system. Mentors and Buddies Roger Preston, manager of Materials Research, added: used to assign a senior person as a mentor to each new professional assigned to my department, but I found mentors don't always work out--the new person treats the mentor as sort of a mix of a father figure and his college advisor. …