WaterOnboarding

I am very familiar with the corporation I work for. After all, I've been an employee off and on since 1992. For others though, it is my health system's first impression on a new employee and I find some of the things we do to new people, right out of the gate, to be foolish. I'm quite certain this process of hiring and training a new employee is quite expensive. A decent effort should be made to try to retain new employees right from the beginning. More often than not, this opportunity is squandered by placing education into the hands of people who aren't teachers but instead, long term employees who have slipped into these rolls.

Tomorrow is my fifth straight day of orientation, which is now known as onboarding. Just as I suspected, this is a term made up by inhumane resource worklife service types to disguise just what it is newbies will be doing. Since Monday, I have been alternating between extreme back and butt pain, mind-sucking boredom and overwhelming fatigue. There is never a really good process for doing this, at least I've not encountered that, but I do have some observations I believe would be worthwhile for employers to consider.

• Don't bombard your new employee with corporate double speak for 8 straight hours and then repeat it for three consecutive days. After a certain amount of time, you are only inducing a semi-comatose state and I'm quite sure, after 7.5 hours, your listener only has eyes for the clock. They certainly aren't paying attention to your outdated videos.

• Make an attempt to have your expert speakers slow the hell down (it may help if you'd allot more time for them to say what they need to say.) My brain can't process what my ears are sending as fast as needed when you present me with a speed speaker. Especially, if that speaker is from benefits. What I heard the other day sounded like someone trying to pull the wool over my eyes (not that I mind wool.) Please don't present me with someone who wants to scold me for my aversion to the stock market at this time. Been there, done that. I unfortunately know intimately what terms like "Black Friday" mean. No speed talker can convince me otherwise, especially when I suspect this person gets a commission if I sign on. There is not enough wool in the world that could get me to sign up after hearing the speed spiel.
  

• Please make an attempt to provide your new employees a comfortable chair in which to sit during your horrifically long sessions. Just today, a knowledgeable speaker (who happened to be really interesting) lectured about skin wounds and the path to no skin breakdown in the hospital and home care setting. Jeeze! Nurse Rudee could barely listen because I was solely focused on the intense pain over the bony prominences of my gluteus most maximus. I am beyond certain if I looked, I'd find non-blanching red spots over my ischial tuberosities. Damn, I hurt. If you are intent on torture being a part of this process, you are succeeding.

• Please don't hand your employees "new" cell phones and make them sign a contract to replace them if lost at the full market price. Savvy cell phone users know these items were not too gently used AND quite old since that particular cell phone company no longer sells that model. 

I don't think I can offer more at this time. To be honest, I can't deal with my back and butt pain right now. I'm wishing I had one of those morphine pumps I learned so much about today. That might work. Tomorrow, sitting on my ass is not on my agenda.