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Some companies offer new hire orientation in a classroom setting.   At different stages of a career, one may have different sentiment towards orientation types of training.  My recent attendance becomes a realization on how far things may have changed in terms of effective information transfer.

It is a good gesture for a company to offer a new hire orientation.    Good things are sometimes harder to inject fundamental change.   Training is a good thing, isn’t it?  Allowing new hire to spend two days to know about the company is a good thing, isn’t it? Trainees would feel obliged to say some good things about it, isn’t it?   If nothing else, the effort of the organizer and the ability to know other folks are among the things that are highly appreciated.   There is no obvious trajectory to change new hire orientation.  Yet it leaves a lingering feeling of “what may happen to this type of training for the future generations?” Would our future generations be welcome to a company in days of orientation?

First, it is a realization of the tiredness created by sitting in a training room, listening to the presenters, for two full days – even for topics that are relevant.  It feels like being forced to watch a TV program without the ability to change the channel, other than the mind wondering around, and the intermittent dozing off as the alternate channel.

In this era of technology offering you tube videos, on-demand program, Netflix, Tivo , we are spoiled.  Free college online classes from Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley would thoughtfully cut a two-hour lecture into seven or eight small clips, each 15 minutes or less.   With multi-media, there is so much information that can be transferred in a few minutes.  It is so effective that it almost becomes scary.

In ten years, what would the “new hire orientation” be like?  If employer-employee relationship still exists, would training still be in classroom?

Change or not, these types of training deserves votes of appreciation for the effort, the gesture, and the connection with people of different functions.   Maybe in the end, it would stay its course for many generations.

Posted in About Learning, Career Management