The First Day On The Job

EACH YEAR, AT LEAST ONE OUT OF EVERY five American workers takes a walk. It will happen more than 20 million times in 1986 alone: an employee will leave his or her job and, in most cases, take another job at another company. Whatever the reason -- cutbacks due to automation, opportunities for professional advancement, the simple desire to do something different -- the process goes on constantly. In fact, it's going on right now. For some 80,000 Americans, today is "the first day on the job."

If the numbers describe a kind of macro turbulence, the experience of starting a new job is no more tranquil. For most people, it's a lot like a child's experience of entering a new school. The day before is often filled with anxiety, laced with pure, unmitigated fear. Will the job be as challenging as it looks? Is the opportunity for advancement as real as I was led to believe? Will I fit in? Did I make the right decision, after all?

But these feelings usually give way to a sense of exhilaration and expectation. There's the desire to succeed, to contribute.There's the chance for a new beginning, free of the numbing staleness of the old job, unencumbered by the politics that plague every workplace. From this perspective, the individual who joined your company at 9 o'clock this morning is, attitudinally, at least, as close to a "model" employee as you're going to get.

Not for long.

If your company is like most companies, that first day on the job is a crushing bore. Instead of being inspired and challenged, your new employees are told where to find the paper clips and legal pads. They get assigned desks and telephones, and they fill out forms until their fingers ache. They meet people, dozens of people, all of whose names are forgotten by lunchtime. Then there's the copy of the "Employee Handbook: Policies and Procedures." As for the job, hey, don't rush it: they can pick up that stuff as they go along.

All of this has an effect, of course, and it's not the one you want. Then and there, a seed is planted, a nagging suspicion that those initial hopes and expectations were wrong. The perception grows that this company is no different from any other company. Small wonder that your "model" employee soon becomes no different from any other employee. Then you sit around with your fellow managers and wonder about declining worker productivity and whatever happened to the work ethic. Is it the public school system, or parental laxity? Drugs, perhaps? A Japanese conspiracy?

Well, we're here to make an argument, a modest one perhaps, that it's partly your own fault -- and that you could do yourself a big favor by changing the way you bring new employees into the company. What's called for is some sort of well-considered introduction to the business, something that actually explains what your company is about, where it came from, who its customers are, how your company is different from any other company they have ever worked for. That's the important stuff to get across the first day on the job; it's the housekeeping chores that can be handled as they go along.

This is not a radical proposition. When you think about it, "introductions" are standard fare in almost every aspect of our lives. A good maitre d', for instance, will go out of his way to tell you what's special about the menu. (A great one will also whisper what to avoid.) A good writer will launch an article with a lead that lets you know what the story's about and why this one is different from the one before. And a good chief executive officer will somehow always find time to give valued customers, bankers, or investors "the grand tour."

New employees, on the other hand, usually get stationery supplies and employee manuals that often seem to be written by a malpractice attorney, or by a fellow who writes assembly instructions for children's toys. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Nowhere is the need for orientation for new employees more acute than in growth companies, where everything is still evolving, from the purpose of the business to its methods and procedures.Yet, ironically, these are the very companies in which arguments against orientations are most often heard. Bookstop Inc. is a case in point. A four-year-old book-retailing business based in Austin, Tex., it puts new people to work in one of its stores with virtually nothing to prepare them for the experience. As far as Gary Hoover, the founder and CEO, is concerned, orientation programs are for big companies and have no relevance to a small growing company.

Hoover's feelings go back a decade to his first job out of college, at Citibank, in New York City. He recalls the meetings with the personnel department and the catered receptions for new employees. Like other large bureaucracies, says Hoover, Citibank "had to struggle to make people feel human," something that just isn't an issue at Bookstop. "Around here, we say, 'Jump in and get your feet wet.' And we don't make any bones about it." Employees, he argues, are perfectly able to pick up what they need to know the old-fashioned way: by watching their peers and asking questions.

But who are these seasoned peers watching over the new hires at Bookstop?Given the company's recent growth, chances are good that they themselves have only been working there a few months. In the past year alone, after all, Hoover has added six stores, hiring some 150 new employees. It is, we suppose, conceivable that Hoover's vision for Bookstop -- one that has allowed the company to flourish thus far in a brutally competitive industry -- is being communicated osmotically through the growing ranks of new hires. More likely, Bookstop is currently engaged in a risky corporate rendition of the party game "Telephone."

This is not to suggest that Hoover's concerns are out of line. He, like many small-company founders and CEOs, has good reason to fear that most insidious of corporate afflictions -- bureaucracy. Just ask Blair Brown of Charrette Corp., a commercial art and office-products supply company based in Woburn, Mass. Several years ago, Brown and his partner decided that the company, with 200 employees, had to get serious about its orientation procedures. "People were learning about the company by ducking bullets," says Brown. With the best of intentions, Brown created a personnel group that would have responsibility for bringing new employees into the company.

The problem was that the new personnel people, by and large, did not know Charrette's business. They could hardly acquaint newcomers with its fast-moving marketplace, or explain how the business worked, because they did not understand these things themselves. "It's a very transaction-intensive business," Brown explains, "and we sell to lots of different markets." New employees had to learn to be effective in this setting, but the individuals responsible for orientation hadn't the faintest idea how to teach them.

So, recently, the company has changed its approach to orientation. Upon joining the company, a new person still meets with the personnel group -- trimmed from five to three people -- to get a rundown on benefits. But the real introduction to the company comes from working side by side with a veteran who's been cutting deals for years. To facilitate process, Brown has gone so far as to rip down the walls between offices, recreating what he fondly refers to as "the bullpen days," when everyone worked in a tiny storefront and was within earshot of everyone else.