What's Your Orientation Process Like Today? When It's Over, Do People Want To Stay Or Have They Already Left?

August 9, 2021

Redefining Your Onboarding Process To Make It Successful:

When considering turnover rates in your agency, do you look at onboarding as a potential cause? If agencies have someone stay 3 months to a year after completion of orientation, the onboarding process is often missed as a reason why employees leave. Your first step is to take a deep dive into the process of orientation and decide what potential errors are there. Consider these items and your grade card as to how you complete them:

Do You Have A Process For All Positions In Place? Many agencies will answer yes, although the process is not well defined. Determine how each position in your agency is oriented and if the process is defined. If you have multiple branches, do outlying branches just have to "wing it" based upon number of staff and dedicated time they can place on the process?
What Is The Average Length of Time Allotted For Orientation? Now, we realize there is no cookie cutter for length of time and that all employees learn at different rates, but this if often widely different throughout agencies. Let's consider nursing positions to emphasize this point. We have seen orientation last anywhere from a week to four months with nursing staff. First of all, throwing an employee into call and independence too soon is a disaster for your patients and the employees. Four months is also too long. These employees become very accustomed to light schedules and never being on call. Then, when you finally give them the workload of typical days, it becomes overwhelming and they quit.
Is Someone Designated To Track Progression Of New Hires? Someone at your agency should be the gatekeeper here. Often times we have staff that are already behind or working overtime involved in orientation. We see new employees not being taught well in the process. You may have the most efficient employee in charge of orienting new employees. The problem is that you may have never provided guidance or an orientation process for the employees to work through with new staff. The best employees aren't always the best teachers. Make sure you have new hires matched with the right person for orientation. Another consideration here is how the employee is moving through orientation checklists. Sometimes, having someone tracking the progression closely means all items are addressed in a timely manner. We have seen employees on orientation for longer periods of time because a few items were not addressed methodically along the way. Whether this is HR, a department head, or a position designed to assist with the orientation process, someone needs to keep the process moving.
How Are You Checking With The Employee? Employees need to be spoken to along the way to receive feedback as to how the process is moving. We need to know if employees do not feel competent with certain skills so we can focus on working through that with them. Does the employee feel like the staff is providing proper mentorship? Sometimes we miss the employee in the process here.

At Kenyon Homecare Consulting , we focus on helping agencies meet goals of high quality, patient focused care. We can help look at your operational processes if you are having issues with turnover or your orientation process. Let us help you change your processes to make a meaningful difference for your employees and your bottom line! Call us today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help.

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