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What Do You Do for New User Orientation?
An anonymous reader asks: "What do you do for new user orientation? I started at a company as part of a very small help desk / MIS department. Part of my job is to give orientation to all new computer users for the entire company (no more than 10 new users a week). Right now I have to sit with each user, go over logging in, passwords, email, outlook, Microsoft Office, and so on. This takes between 30-45 minutes. What do other IT departments do? I was thinking of a Flash presentation or website, and maybe even a short orientation movie. What ideas have you tried and how well did they work?"
Maybe you are swaming them with stuff they don't need.
Large numbers of new users every week can mean immense expansion or they are really put of by your new user orientation meetings.
If its turnover, perhaps it would be easier to skip the email/office stuff until they need it.
liqbase
The Company I work for try to bunch together new joiners and run a full 1 day computer introduction training session in one of our dedicated training rooms, on their second day (with first day being the usual this is your team, this is the fire regs etc). New Joiners get the benefit of meeting other people starting at the same time as them - and then get the run through on how our systems work - with more structured training for specific applications they may have to use carried out later that week. Its fairly informal but also gives us the chance to go properly through our computer use policy etc. we are finding that fewer people need these intro's as time progresses, however you still get the odd person who is mystified by the whole thing.
It involves duct tape, Vaseline, five rolls of toilet paper and the trunk of a mini-cooper.
But we don't call it "orientation", we call it "hazing".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I sit them in front of a computer, don't tell them anything and I poke them with a stick if they do something wrong.
Task Mangler
Unless you want to spend a lot of money putting together a professional and engaging presentation, don't bother with that route. I am not a manager, but I have been to enough new employee orientations that I feel I have a good understanding of what works (at least for me). Sitting a new employee down in a room and making them watch some presentation, be it on DVD or online is pretty much a waste of time. The thing that a new employee needs is face time. Sit with them and show them what they will be doing. Sit them with their co-workers and let them show him what, exactly, the job entails. Orientation is about gettin gto know your peers, learning about the company you will be working for, and finding out what the job is that you have been hired for. There is always the obligatory legal issues (dress code, no bad language in the workplace, no molestation of the opposite sex, and whatnot). But the important thing is to get a feel for the new environment and find out what you are being hired to do in a more specific way than the interview process would have lead you to believe.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
A wiki is probably the most flexible way to set up something like this. It can serve both as an introduction (think pages linked one after another) and as a general documentation tool.
And unlike a flash presentation it's searchable and less of a pain in the rear end to update.
PS. Wikis can be read only for regular users too...
.: Max Romantschuk
We give our new guys a laptop and tell them to install it. If it's not running Debian smoothly by the next day, we fire them. What they use for office, mail, web, chat - whatever, is their own business.
"Buddy" programs can be effective. Have the newbie work with another employee to teach them the basics such as how to access the important intranet sites, where to rent projectors, good eating spots, how to change/reset passwords, etc.. Presentations don't seem too useful, and are probably driven more by HR's CYA policy than anything (i.e., an ethics class is mandatory so people know what they can't do).
That's closer to ideal.. In reality most people get an email. I've heard that a near one-on-one instructor/student training class is optimal.... I've also heard that there's a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. I'm still waiting for both.
about how he "lost his lifes work and will probably get fired because he didn't listen to the IT guy."
Monstar L
I know, I've done that for a product presentation. After one year, new version, throw away the presentation, start over again...
I agree that multimedia is good, but it's not the only thing to have. I've been giving and receiving presentations for a few years, and a good video is really useful. More useful, however, is a paper copy containing all of the key points. Paper can be picked up and browsed at one's leisure, it can be pinned next to the desk (quite useful for new users learning how to log-in), it can contain all of the useful information and pointers (for example, advising users to check a wiki for details relating to specialist applications).
A paper (laminated) hint-sheet is easy to produce, can address the majority of simple issues, and can can ensure that users always have an easy-to-access reminder of what they learnt from individual sessions and video presentations.
One more thing, it doesn't matter how fabulous the video presentation was, be charasmatic. It makes people feel good about you, feel more interested and able to learn, and puts you on their side instead of them feeling no qualms to call/bother 'the faceless tech guy'.
Oh.
New hires at my old company were given a cheapo desks and chairs that required assembly. This applied to everyone from the receptionist to my most senior hires.
.com type investors loved it, too :)
They were shown to their new spot, given the tools, and told that this was their first order of business. That was all.
Nearby employees were told to offer any and all assistance, but only if asked.
This worked on many levels. It was symbolic of the philosophy at the company. For some, it ended up being a "team-building" exercise, or a social ice-breaker. For others, it showed that they were clever and self reliant. Some folks couldn't get it done, and refused to ask for help. This almost always signified termination at their first opportunity. And the
New Employees need:
To know things (rules, passwords, techniques, etc.)
To feel things (comfort with the people around them, a small sense of 'at home')
If you get the second one, the first will take care of itself. Spend time with the person. Actual "Face" time. Teach them something (anything) about the company, so they get in the learning mode -- they'll pick up a lot in between the lines of any topic you pick. Make the rules of the company (dress codes and crap like that) as small a part of the conversation as possible, but provide them with a document on it. Play the rules down. You want them to feel free, so that they'll talk and learn and grow on their own.
Take 'em to lunch. Do it as a small group -- not necessarily the whole team, but more than just Boss and hire. Get them to be social and see people around them as lunch partners.
Then GIVE THEM A TASK WHICH WILL REQUIRE COMMUNICATION WITH THE GROUP. After they've got plugged in, the assimilation process will take care of itself.
The idea that you'd want to give them a movie or something suggests that you're not interested in spending time talking with people. I don't want to work at your company.
To wit, PC vs. Mac vs. Linux. Mac users are also asked about how long they've been using them.
Next is setting up their accounts; this involves warning them of the minimum acceptable complexity allowed for passwords, showing them how to change their passwords to something marginally more memorable than the automatic preassigned random gibberish, and reminding them of the minimum requirements after the first password change attempt is rejected. I then tell them that neither I nor anyone else will ever ask for their password — if I or anyone in IT need access, we will change it, and tell them the new password afterward (so the user may change it back); anyone who asks for their password should be reported to me and to the central IT security number immediately as an attempt to breach security.
After that, I point out the selection of web browsers available on their workstation (IE/Firefox/Opera, additional options for the Mac), advocate Firefox for regular use, and direct them to the central IT website's security training -- which is mostly dick-and-jane "don't share passwords, human!" common sense stuff; there's a quiz as part of it. I tell them to complete the security training, while I do something vaguely productive nearby (borrowing a mobile laptop if need be) and wait for questions. At the end, I point out the main IT policies page, note that most of it is common sense, but they should glance through the policies as soon as possible, because they may end up "nailed to the wall with rusty railroad spikes as a warning to others" if they fail to follow them. If they express doubt, I invite them to stop by my desk to see my rusty railroad spikes. (Bottom desk drawer; four of 'em, plus a 6kg sledge with a 40 cm handle. Just in case.)
Once that's done, I then introduce them to the most regularly used software applications: email, Office, calendaring app, the local quick-and-dirty non-Acrobat PDF maker, and so on. The VPN software usually requires a digression into a bad analogy to explain why it's important. ("If you use the dumb-as-a-senator idea that the internet is a series of tubes, the problem is that most of the tubes are transparent, and might let any evil passerby see what's inside. Unless you're willing to give me all of your credit cards now to go shopping with, this is a bad thing. A VPN uses cryptography to run an opaque garden hose over to one of our secure machines, so people can't spy on you until after your traffic leaves our network again.") An overview of the strengths and limitations of whatever POS machine they're stuck working at follows.
I then give them my mixed guru/BOFH lecture:
I have happy users; I am beloved, respected, and feared. Aside from an expresso machine for my office, what more could a geek want?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.