Developing a training program for new employees requires creation of relevant objectives and a realistic budget. The program should be delivered by an expert through an appropriate delivery mode. Besides, the training program should be periodic and continuous to ensure that the employees’ output is optimal. Specifically, an effective new employee orientation program determines the productivity of an organization besides the level of customer satisfaction. This analytical treatise attempts to review the effectiveness of the new employee orientation program at the Department of Veteran Affairs. In addition, the treatise offers comprehensive recommendations for improving the new employee orientation programs.
New Employee Orientation
The main objectives of the new employee orientation program at the Department of Veteran Affairs include the passing of teamwork, time management, and customer service skills. Besides, the program aims at addressing conflict resolution, complaints escalation, and personal communication skills. Basically, the training program is meant to restore the employee confidence, personal adjustment within the organization culture, and intra and inter personal interaction with other employees and customers.
Significance of the new employee orientation program
Reflectively, self-evaluation skills on the individual concentration level during training encompass actual and expected outcome. Through designing relevant program training model, concentration evaluation of employees at the Department of Veteran Affairs has remained active in developing dependence of interest attached to an activity, creating proactive relationships, and monitoring their interaction with physical aspects of team evaluation. Eventually, this has paid off since the new employees effectively learn to appreciate the essence of learning and need to stay active (Andreadis, 2009).
The process of learning within the Department of Veteran Affairs for new employees is conducted through the new employee orientation and continuous organization behavior modification. Learning in this organization is a major prerequisite to the realization of managerial and operational changes. The four main categories of intervention strategies in organizational development highlighted in the program include strategies that are based on the human processes, structural orientation, techno-social orientation, and organizational alteration. Generally, for an organization to succeed in nurturing relevant organs, departments, and channels for addressing and promoting productive behavior, there must be an all round objective working relationship with the employees (Sinclair, 2010).
Behavioral rehearsal is critical in improving generalization to real life settings in the Department of Veteran Affairs among new employees. In practice, especially during the assessment period, the organizational culture at Department of Veteran Affairs identifies signs that might indicate high-risk situations and seek to employ coping skills to address these shortcomings. This conforms to the element of synthesis and evaluation measures to prevent relapse after implementation of the new employee orientation program (Noe, 2013).
Furthermore, as proposed by the new employee orientation program, the Department of Veteran Affairs’ organizational development employs a problem-solving therapy in practice within the group appropriately. The approach is necessary in situations where the organization is unable to cope with unproductive employees as a result of poor morale. Considering the social and personal consequences associated with the inability to cope with the challenges, the training program development carry out an assessment that offers the most effective response and a permanent solution to employee concerns, development, and welfare in line with the ideals in the bloom taxonomy (Sinclair, 2010).
Organization training module management identifies a range of situations facing the organization in their social environment and generates multiple alternative solutions to these problems. It lays a series of procedures that are necessary to achieve desired results. As indicated in the new employee orientation program for the Department of Veteran Affairs, to increase productive behavior, it is vital to create a healthy work environment and personal growth perspectives that apply to all situations since problems that each individual faces at an interpersonal level ultimately affect the group (Noe, 2013).
In carrying out an in-depth inquiry to each employee’s personal life, the employee training agent is expected to determine which therapy best suits each individual in the program. Thus, through properly designed training procedures, talent promotion and motivation of productive behavior is present in that individual with the best alternative ways of solving problems he or she faces in role execution. As a result, the organization’s training program will function on the periphery of inclusive and proactive response mechanisms (DeCenzo and Robbins, 2007).
Human process based intervention strategies such as the new employee orientation program at the Department of Veteran Affairs are presented as basically aimed at making an improvement to the general state of relationships between the targeted individuals and within groups in the organizational setup. To attain this, a sensitive form of training is carried out to ensure that both manager and employee teams remain flexible to the basic needs of their counterparts. An emotion testing program is introduced to test the emotional position of employees towards each other, after which a counseling session is held to ensure that employees care much about the social needs of their counterparts. The main driving point in these particular approaches is the argument that a good state of relations, information transfer, and collaboration are essential in fostering good environments for the flourishing of an organization (Noe, 2013).
Success evaluation criteria
The success evaluation criteria for new employee orientation program functions on the feedback from the employees after the end of each stage of the training. The main positive characteristics of good organizational behavior include motivation, empowerment, and training. Reflectively, these factors are internalized in the training program of the Department of Veteran Affairs to foster a proactive attitude among the staff and towards the customers. Among the motivation enhancing measurement practices include incentives, promotions, rewards, and recognition. The effectiveness of these components depends on vertical and horizontal alignments (Andreadis, 2009). Therefore, the feedback system management system may influence positive or negative perception among employees. This is summarized in the table below.
(Source: DeCenzo and Robbins, 2007)
Recommendations
The aspect of planning for a new employee orientation program is important to demystify poor performance. Reflectively, proper use of competency review system is directly proportional to employee performance since the magnitude of success depends on social interaction skills. Therefore, organizational effectiveness should be the cornerstone for modeling acceptable behavior between the management and staff. Thus, the policies adopted should be aligned to the basic building blocks of performance within the Department of Veteran Affairs organization. These policies should incorporate employee-employer relationship model, performance review, and organizational social culture. Organizational development has been defined as a process of fostering development within the organization setups through the adoption of a cycle of well planned intervention approaches aimed at enhancing the general efficiency of an organization at the same time bettering the positions of a majority of its members. Thus, organizational development pays more attention to relationships between the employees and their surrounding environments solely for the betterment of the organization (Sinclair, 2010).
The improvements on the new employee orientation program should incorporation a people-subsystem. The people-subsystem may be effective when the objectives are properly matched with the responsibilities assigned to an individual. As a result, there will be an optimal performance within acceptable organizational behavior, which will make an employee to be responsive to team work and learning initiatives (Andreadis, 2009). Generally, the people-subsystem may be declared effective when there is a balance in each of the above elements in a learning organization environment such as the Department of Veteran Affairs. This is summarized in the figure below.
Ethics can be applied in the new employee orientation program at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Basically, ethics denote sets of laws or moral systems that provide a basis for discerning whether an action is correct or erroneous. Ethical elements in the training program will define expected behavior, procedural patterns, and response to every deviation. Thus, ethics should be aligned within four models of Department of Veteran Affairs’ organizational training module. These models are the motivation to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend. When the system functions within accepted parameters, employees will eventually develop a self consciousness to deliver quality services and defend the organization as part of a family unit (Andreadis, 2009). This is summarized in the table below.
(Source: DeCenzo and Robbins, 2007)
Conclusion
In order to understand the impacts of a new employee orientation program on performance and productivity, it is necessary to establish the scope and characteristic of each format of the training module. It takes the form of professionalism, organization, respect, optimal performance, and discipline. Therefore, the new employee orientation program stresses to the employee the need for an active cooperation between personal skills and the roles assigned and the set targets for the assigned roles. For an organization to succeed in calculating relevant organs, departments, and channels for addressing and promoting productive behavior, there must be a relevant and objective training program. This may be in the form of psychological testing, experience, value and beliefs, attitudes, and group common interests in a new employee.
References
Andreadis, N. (2009). Learning and organizational effectiveness: A systems perspective, Performance Improvement, 48 (1), 5-11.
DeCenzo, D., & Robbins, S. (2007). Fundamentals of human resource management (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Noe, A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). Boston, USA: McGraw Hill.
Sinclair, M. (2010). Fear and self-loathing in the city: A guide to keeping sane in the square mile. London, UK: Karnac Books.