Employee Retention
For this SLP assignment, review the following:
Arthur, D. (2019). Chapter 17: Online employee orientation. In Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, & orienting new employees (6th ed.). Harper Collins [Books 24/7]. Available in the Trident Online Library, Skillsoft database.
Losing key employees can have a disproportionate impact on the business. The people that organizations wish to retain are often the ones most likely to leave. It has been said that every worker is five minutes away from handing in his or her notice, and 150 working hours away from walking out of the door to a better offer. There is no such thing as a job for life and today's workers have few qualms about leaving employers. Action is required to retain talented people, but there are limits to what any organization can do. Employees are more likely to stay willingly if they feel valued and ensuring that this happens is the most important message of this chapter.
The main takeaway for employee retention is that if a company’s employees are happy, if they are treated as valued assets to the company, and if they experience a good work/life balance, they will usually exhibit a strong organizational commitment to the company. There is something that will help to put a new employee on the path to commitment to the organization: an employee orientation program. Arthur (2019) developed an excellent sample orientation program in Chapter 17 of Arthur textbook.
Your SLP assignment is to develop an employee orientation program based upon the model published by Arthur (2019), or another one you find in your Trident Online Library research, or one from your employer that needs to be updated.
Arthur (2019) identified 75 topics in Chapter 16: Look in the Table of Contents for Part IV, Chapter 16, Components. Arthur described 5 broad categories of an organizational orientation program: Employer commitment to employees (4 potential options), Employer expectations (5 possible options), Benefits (19 possible options), Employee handbook (33 possible options), and The organization (9 possible options). Your employee orientation plan should contain at least five (5) sections, but the choice of which sections is up to you. It is best to select options that fit your industry, employee pool, and company so that the SLP assignment is meaningful to you. You can do more than five sections if you want a more complete orientation program.
You also have the option of developing an online orientation or a traditional face-to-face group orientation. As you determine the format and content of your orientation program, keep in mind that there are drawbacks and advantages to both types. You can read about these areas in Arthur’s (2019) Chapter 17, too.
Arthur’s (2019) Chapter 17 includes a sample orientation program; however, it is not quite in correct APA format so you will need to make some adjustments to formatting headings (begin every word of more than 3 letters with a capital letter—do not type anything in all capital letters; paragraph indents (always use ½ inch indentations); bulleted items (indent ½ inch before the bullet point and ½ inch after it); margins (1 inch on all 4 sides plus left-align all paragraphs); and, double-space the entire paper without adding additional spacing before and after headings, between paragraphs, or between references.
In your 4-page essay, address the four parts of the assignment:
- Develop an employee orientation program that contains not less than five (5) of the 75 sections discussed by Arthur (2019) in Chapter 17 of the required reading.
- Review the five selected components of your orientation program and discuss why you selected each.
- Discuss which type of program was created (online orientation or a traditional face-to-face group orientation) and explain why it was selected, what the advantages are of the format you selected, and what the disadvantages are of the format you did not select.
- Meet with a coworker or supervisor and show them the list of 75 options available for your plan, pointing out the five you selected. Did they agree or not agree with your choices? What did they see as more important to your company’s new employees?
SLP Assignment Expectations
Refer to background readings and what you have found in the Trident Online Library. Cite all sources used to help you through these steps. Support your discussion of key concepts in this SLP assignment with at least one reference found in a peer-reviewed journal or textbook in the Trident Online Library in addition to the Arthur (2019) reference.
Your essay submission should be 3 to 4 pages, which means at least 3 full pages,not counting the cover page and reference list page. Use Times New Roman (or Arial) size 12 font; double-space everything, including references, but do not add extra spacing between paragraphs or after headings; and make sure your margins are one inch on all four sides. You can view how the cover page content should appear in the APA Style, 7th edition. Student papers do not require a running head on any page. In addition, students are not required to include an Abstract. Your paper’s title should be above the first paragraph on page two (there can be no paragraph with the title or heading of “Introduction”). Last, all pages must have a page number in the top right corner and that is all that is allowed in the header of your papers.
Use the assignment template.
Your submission will be assessed on the criteria found in the grading rubric for this assignment.
Required Material
Required Reading
Arthur, D. (2019). Chapter 17: Online employee orientation. In Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, & orienting new employees (6th ed.). Harper Collins [Books 24/7]. Available in the Trident Online Library, Skillsoft database.
Optional Source
Armstrong, M., & Tayler, S. (2020). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice (15th ed.). Kogan Page. Available in the Trident Online Library, Skillsoft database.