Orientation & Onboarding

What is Onboarding?

Onboarding helps new employees acclimate to their jobs and your organization over their first year of employment. It involves teaching them about their role and performance expectations as well as introducing them to organizational values and the ways work gets done within your organization.

Often, onboarding is confused with orientation. Orientation is typically a one-time event held before a new employee’s first day at work that focuses on paperwork and other compliance activities. While necessary, orientation is only a small part of onboarding. Onboarding is a more comprehensive process that involves people from all levels of the organization. Why is onboarding important? When onboarding is done well, it leads to several positive outcomes (Bauer, 2010) including:

• Higher job satisfaction

• Organizational commitment

• Lower turnover

• Higher performance levels

• Career effectiveness

• Lowered stress

Onboarding helps improve employee retention, performance, and wellbeing. How do you onboard new employees effectively? According to Gallup (2013), 88% of employees don’t feel their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.

In many cases, organizations overwhelm new employees with paperwork and policies. To be successful, onboarding programs need to move beyond a transactional approach to onboarding that focuses on compliance and filling out forms. To adopt a more strategic approach to onboarding, purposely plan for four different aspects of onboarding throughout new employees’ first year of employment. Understand the four aspects and use the resources listed to better understand the landscape.

• Compliance is the most basic level of onboarding. It involves ensuring new employees understand workplace policies and procedures and complete paperwork and training required by law.

  • Professional Conduct: Ohio’s State Board of Education administers the ethical standards for educators. They investigate allegations involving criminal or ethical violations to ensure that all Ohio students receive instruction from educators committed to a safe, supportive and healthy school community. Resources include:

    • Licensure Code of Professional conduct

    • Criminal Records

    • Disciplinary Search

    • Professional Conduct Procedures

• Clarification refers to ensuring new employees understand the requirements of their job and other performance expectations. Employees should be provided with the tools and resources needed for their work.

  • Ohio Educator Standards: Defines the expectations for, and traits of, effective educators.

  • Educator Evaluations: Provides resources for implementing educator evaluations in Ohio.

  • Learning Management System for Ohio Education: Provides free courses and professional development for licensed Ohio educators.

  • System to Achieve Results for Students (STARS): Enroll in Ohio professional development opportunities. In addition, many professional associations and networks provide learning opportunities that may benefit employees.

• Culture includes helping new employees understand workplace norms, unwritten rules, and how people work together. Employees need to gain deeper knowledge of the organization’s culture including mission, values, customs, and politics.

  • Culturally Responsive Practice is an approach that encompasses and recognizes both students’ and educators’ lived experiences, culture, and linguistic capital. Culturally responsive educators reflect on their students’ as well as their own lived experiences, culture, and linguistic capital to inform, support, and ensure high-quality instruction. The program includes four courses (listed below). The learning opportunities live on the Ohio Department of Education’s Learning Management System and on Ohio Leadership Advisory Council. The learning can be facilitated in professional learning communities and is supported with facilitator guides and train-the-trainer opportunities. It also can be done by an individual through the online learning platforms.

    • Introduction to Culturally Responsive Practice - Facilitation Guide & Appendix

    • Cultural Responsiveness - Facilitation Guide & Appendix

    • Socio-Political Awareness - Facilitation Guide & Appendix

    • Academic Achievement - Facilitation Guide & Appendix

    The Department offers free facilitator training to those interested in locally utilizing the Culturally Responsive Practices Program. Find the list of trained facilitators.

    If you are interested in becoming a facilitator, email Stephanie Fojas.

• Connection refers to fostering a sense of belonging by cultivating relationships and connecting new employees to formal and informal networks. Onboarding that only covers compliance and clarification is transactional rather than strategic. It’s more like a checklist or task list of actions to be completed. Onboarding programs are more effective when they systematically address all four areas throughout an employee’s first year of employment.

  • Mentoring: Create integrated support systems for both new and experienced educators.

  • Resident Educator Program: Assists beginning educators with mentoring and professional development.