Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Tip Sheet #33

Orientation vs. onboarding

If you are a school principal right now this is an exciting time of the year.  You are not only closing up one school year but you are busily hiring new teachers and staff for the upcoming year.  You have spent a great deal of time in your preparation for the hiring practice.  You have sculpted the right interview questions, screened perhaps hundreds of resumes, put together a solid committee to help you interview and you have scheduled demonstration lessons for a select few finalists.  You know that hiring is very important and you will do everything to make sure that you choose the right candidate.

Now push the clock forward a month.  Have you spent as much time preparing to bring that new person into your school community?  My guess is that you have not.  You may or may not have an orientation process that consists of nothing more than filling out forms and hearing from a benefits person.  But after those few days in August, what happens?

I ask everyone who is reading this blog to pause and reflect upon how they were brought into their current work community?  For me, it was nothing more than a sitting listening to an unending barrage of people throwing different forms out to me.  I learned very little and left with my head spinning. I know we can do better!

Do you have an orientation or an onboarding process?  By nature of definition, orientation can be defined as a program of introduction for new employees.  It is a one-time event and many times can be governed by a simple checklist. This helps the new person get the big picture of your organization.  After orientation, the new person is ready to be trained.

On the other hand, onboarding (a term relatively unfamiliar to those in the world of education) is not a single event.  It is a process of bringing new employees into the culture of your organization.  Onboarding remains a sequence of well planned events that occurs on the job.  It is an individualized process that happens over time.  (Insperity)

Your school needs both.  You need to orient and onboard your new staff.  Your overall goal must be to ensure that your new employee fits into your organization.  Always remember that your culture drives your school.  This is one time where we sometimes forget about the importance of culture. We take it for granted.

As a principal, you in all likelihood yield to the district for that orientation process.  Many principals think that does it and the job is done.  I will argue that the job is just beginning.  Onboarding involves much more than providing that friendly teacher to serve as an unofficial buddy.

It is time that each principal pause and take a moment to think about he or she brings new people into the organization.  It is also time that you stop and design a comprehensive program to onboard that new individual.  At the end of the day, I think it will be time well spent which will enable you to continue to build your powerful team of educators to serve the children in your school.

Insperity. Retrieved from https://www.insperity.com/blog/employee-onboarding-vs-orientation-need/