You may recall that three focus areas were identified from the 2021 Great Colleges to Work For (GCTWF) survey results. One of the focus areas seeks to facilitate re-connection and attending to our culture. One of the many wonderful suggestions that came from our focus group discussions was the need to bring back new employee orientation. As we hire new people, we should be setting standards and sharing values. New employees benefit from opportunities to ask questions and meet other new employees. New employee orientation simply needs to be brought back and not just resurrected but rebuilt to be better than before.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

We are working on the agenda and organizing it around Drake’s Core Values. We are thrilled to share that every member of the President’s Council has committed to taking turns being a speaker at the orientation sessions. Human Resources is working with key departments across the institution to assure the new employee orientation experience is robust, informative and, well, fun. It should not just be a learning event, but one that builds community–and culture. As a new employee, part of the benefit of attending orientation is to meet people outside of their work areas and, hopefully, make some new work friends.

Every new program benefits from a pilot or two, so we are planning on scheduling pilot sessions in early 2022 where we will invite newer employees to attend. These will be folks who never got to attend new employee orientation. This will be a great opportunity to make up for that missed opportunity, while also getting valuable feedback on the material and format. If you are not a newer employee but you would like the opportunity to attend a pilot and provide feedback, let Maureen know.

We’ll be looking to have a pilot in late January and another in early to mid-February. We’ll “go live” in early March. Our hope is that we’ll be in a place with COVID-19 where we can have the pilots be in-person, but we will plan for virtual orientation if that’s the safer route to go at that time.

If you have ideas or suggestions on how to help cultivate Drake’s culture, we would still love to hear from you. Please reach out to Nate or Maureen.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources; Nate Reagen, Office of the President