Chapter-9: Employee Orientation,
Placement & Separation
William B. Werther, Jr., Ph.D.
Keith Davis, Ph.D.
&
K Aswathappa
*Employee Orientation
• A procedure for providing new employees with basic background
information about the firm.
• Orientation is a systematic and planned introduction of employees to
their jobs, their co-workers and the organization. It is also called
induction.
Benefits of Orientation
• Welcome new employee
• Provides essential information
• Helps you get to know the employee and assess training needs
• It ensures long term retention of the employees by creating a
robust first-time impression.
Topic often covered in Employee
Orientation Program
1. Organizational Issues: • Product line/ service provided
• History of employer • Review of production process
• History of the organization • Company policies and rules
• Names and titles of key • Disciplinary regulations
executives • Employee handbook
• Employee’s title & departments • Safety procedure and
• Layout of physical facilities enforcement
• Probationary period
Topic often covered in Employee
Orientation Program
2. Employee Benefits: • Insurance benefits
• Pay scale • Retirement program
• Vacation & holidays • Rehabilitation programs
• Rest/ breaks
• Training & Education benefit
• Counselling
Topic often covered in Employee
Orientation Program
• 3. Introduction
• To supervisor
• To trainers
• To co-workers
• To employee counsellor
Topic often covered in Employee
Orientation Program
• 4. Job Duties:
• Job location
• Job tasks
• Job safety requirements
• Overview of jobs
• Job objectives
• Relationship to other jobs
Strategic choices of orientation
• Formal----------Informal
• Individual---------Collective
• Serial--------------Disjunctive
• Investiture------Divestiture
Strategic choices of
orientation
• Formal Orientation: A proper and
planned orientation program is
carried out before the new employee
is onboard to acquaint him/her with
the work environment.
Formal Orientation Program
Strategic choices of orientation
• Informal Orientation: The new hire is directly onboard after a
briefing on his/her work. He/she is left by himself/herself to acquaint
with the work environment and the team.
• Individual Orientation: The small companies prefer to carry out
orientation program for a single person individually since they don’t
hire in bulk.
• Group Orientation: Mostly, large organizations that carry out bulk
hiring, execute a single orientation program for the whole lot hired in a
given period.
Strategic choices of orientation
• Serial Orientation: A well-experienced personnel execute the orientation
of the new hires as per the given criteria and norms.
• In serial orientation, an experienced employee inducts a new employee.
The experienced employee acts as a guide or tutor or role model for the
new employee.
• Disjunctive Orientation: Here, the new employee does not have any role
model to follow; instead, he/she has to develop one’s inventive ways of
doing things.
• In the case of disjunctive, orientation the newly appointed employees do
not have predecessors to guide them and solve their doubts, etc. They
learn by trial and error method.
Strategic choices of orientation
• Investiture orientation seeks to ratify the usefulness of the
characteristics that the person brings to the new job.
• This approach is followed in high level appointments Here, a person is
appointed as an executive on the basis of what he/she can bring to
the organization.
• The new hires are given freedom to select their own-office
furnishings and subordinates and to make other decisions that will
reflect on their performance.
Strategic choices of orientation
• Divestiture orientation, seeks to make some changes in the
characteristics of the new hire, although, he or she was selected
on the basis of their potential for performance.
**Employee Placement
• Placement is the assignment or reassignment of an employee to
a new job.
Socialization
• Socialization is the ongoing process through which an employee
begins to understand and accept the values, norms and beliefs
held by others in the organization.
Types of Employee Placement
• Promotion
• Transfer
• Demotions
Types of Employee Placement…contd
• Promotion
• A promotion occurs when an employee is moved from a job to
another position that is higher in pay, responsibility or
organizational level.
Types of Promotion
Promotion
Merit- Seniority-
based based
Types of Promotion
• Merit-based
• It occur when an employee is promoted because of superior
performance in the current job.
• Seniority-based
• It occur when an employee has the longest length of service
with the employer.
Types of Employee Placement…contd
• Transfer
It occur when an employee is moved from one job to another position that is relatively
equal in pay, responsibility, or organizational level.
• Demotions
It occurs when an employee is moved from one job to another position that is lower in
pay, responsibility or organizational level.
• Bumping: Bumping is a practice used by many companies to reserve talent pool
during downsizing, wherein, a senior level employee, whose position has been
selected for elimination, is offered the option of accepting an alternative position of
lesser seniority within the organization.
***Employee Separations
• A separation is a decision that the individual and the organization
should part.
• Separation can take several forms such as:
• Temporary leave of absence
• Attrition
• Layoffs
• Termination
Types of Separations
• Temporary leave of absence
• Employees sometimes need to leave their job temporarily.
• Medical
• Family
• Educational
• Recreational
• Other motives
Types of Separations
• Attrition
• It is the normal separation of people from an organization as a
result of resignation, retirement or death.
• Layoffs:
• Layoffs entail the separation of employees from the
organization for economic or business reason.
Types of Separations
• Termination:
• It is a broad term that encompasses permanent separation from
the organization for any reason.
• Severance Pay: It is given to the employees who are being permanently
separated.
• Outplacement: Effort made by the employer directly or indirectly to
help a recently separated worker to find a job.
