We’ve all heard the saying, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Not only is this true with your convenience store customers, but also with new employees who are just beginning their career with you. The onboarding experience can make or break a new hire’s impression of your company. A successful orientation program is an important first step for an employee’s time with you.
Start Employees Off Right
New employees may be apprehensive about what to expect when starting out. Help minimize this apprehension by explaining what they’ll learn at the start of their orientation. Encourage them to ask you questions as you go. Remember, a warm and friendly orientation lets the newest member of the team know you’re glad they’re on board.
Benefits of Orientation
There are many benefits of a successful orientation program:
Knowledge consistency: Your orientation program ensures that all employees start out with the same information. This is important for customer service, but it’s also critical for safety and compliance guidelines. Online learning management systems improve consistency in training.
Training success: An effective orientation program sets the stage for successful training throughout the employee’s career with you. Use your orientation program to introduce your new hires to the training methods they can expect to encounter as they grow in their jobs.
Staff retention: Effective orientation programs reduce employee turnover by inspiring confidence, encouraging skill development, and re-affirming the employee’s decision to accept a position with you.
Sense of belonging: New employees may have a hard time fitting into your team at first. Alleviate some of this anxiety by making sure your orientation program includes information on industry-specific language and convenience store teamwork. You can also plan teambuilding activities as part of the orientation process to introduce new hires to the rest of the team and help them get to know each other.
Your Role in Orientation
As a convenience store manager and effective leader, your words and actions mean a great deal during a new employee’s first days on the job. Your actions during this time will set the expectations for how employees should interact with each other and customers. This begins the moment a new employee walks through your doors – be ready to welcome them and let them know you’re happy they chose to work at your store. Throughout all your interactions with the new employees, be sure to model the behavior you want to see from your employees.
Orientation and Gears to Your Career®
Orientation is an important first step in an employee’s learning path. Gears to Your Career is a training philosophy that utilizes learning paths, along with blended learning strategies and the power of RTO’s trainingGrid® LMS to provide employees with the training needed to achieve success within your company.
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