Earlier, I mentioned starting a job on March 12, 1996, that I thought would get me through college and how much that organization invested into hiring forty of the one thousand or so candidates who applied. I didn’t share how much of that investment came during the first two weeks we were on the payroll. The company certainly had a lot of time and money tied up in the process before we ever set foot on the property: several rounds of off-site interviews, competency testing at the local tech school, background checks, and drug screens—which shouldn’t be confused with “drug testing” because testing drugs was a bit more taboo back then. That all carried a hefty price tag, even back in the ’90s, but not nearly as much as the organization invested by having all forty of us go through two full weeks of orientation!

At that point, the starting wage for hourly positions at that facility was $9.48 per hour before factoring in any of the benefits—some of the best in the Shenandoah Valley at the time. They paid each of us almost $1,000 to sit in training rooms for two solid weeks, some of which covered the processes and procedures we’d soon be expected to follow to the letter. Still, there was just as much face time with the local management team.

I won’t pretend like I remember the majority of the material that was shared over the course of those two weeks. My point here isn’t to make a case for whether or not that much time was necessary. But I do remember like it was yesterday the impression the plant manager made with us from day one and how he walked the talk for the next few years until he retired. What stood out the most to me was his focus on the importance of safety, his making sure we knew he was always approachable, and his emphasis on paying little attention to the rumor mill. Regarding rumors, he assured us we’d hear at least one every day and said we should start one of our own if we didn’t!

While joking about us starting rumors, he was incredibly serious about safety and how approachable he was. I saw him on the shop floor interacting with the off-shift crew I was part of more in my first month than I had seen the construction foreman at the job I came from in the entire year I worked there—and that foreman was only responsible for the six or eight of us on that one crew.

Fast-forward to late 2013 and most of 2014. I was doing almost all the hiring for that facility I started with in March of 1996. At that point, the amount of time we were given to complete all the new hire paperwork, cover all the rules and regs, and introduce the new employees to our safety and quality processes was limited to just four hours. Those new team members spent the rest of their first day engaged in something similar to what they were hired for. I’m still not making a case for whether the time for the orientation process was good or bad. Still, I will challenge you to consider which version of orientation in that same facility provided the new folks coming on board with more exposure to the local leadership team. Since I’m too impatient to give you much time to guess, I’ll lay it out for you! During my final eighteen months with the company, when I hired around 225 people, I don’t remember a single instance where the plant manager even said hello to one group of new employees. To that end, the only managers who were regularly involved in the orientation process were the safety manager and the quality manager, both of whom I consider close friends still today—which is likely tied to the fact that they gave a crap about the people we were bringing into the organization…

Here’s one more question: If you worked in that facility under both of those management teams, which would you be more likely to recommend to your friends or family as a place to consider when they were looking for employment?

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