by Roy Taylor, Business to Business Coorespondent

St. Joseph Medical Center-Carol Miller, Human Resources Specialist: “Our general orientation runs two days for all employees and continues on for more clinical areas. Some things it covers include an overview of St. Joseph Medical Center’s position in the industry, mission, vision and value statements and the employee’s role in them; familiarizing staff with the OSF Health Care System, and departmental mission statements. All employees are also oriented on our pastoral care department, customer service standards, safety, OSHA standards, and policies regarding our nuclear engineering department. For more technical employees, training continues and is much more clinical in nature.”

Orkin-Mary Lou Munster, Office Manager: “All employees watch a series of videos when they start to familiarize themselves with Orkin’s overall policies. Then persons such as salespeople and technicians ride with experienced reps for four to five days to receive on-the-job training. Sales and technical positions also attend a week of training classes out of state before they begin their work. There may be additional sales training seminars once in a while, but that is usually just a one-day thing. Regarding technicians, once they learn their positions, they are put on a route and generally do not receive any more training.”

Bank One-Agnes Bradford, Retail Representative: “Most of our new employee training is conducted during a one day seminar at our office in Springfield. Items covered include benefits, banking overview, secrecy, and ethics. For retail training, which includes positions such as tellers, new account representatives, and loan personnel, this currently is handled at each individual branch. However, we are building a retail training center in Bloomington to handle all training for branches in Central Illinois. This will help, because when employees are given hands-on training at their own branch, things may be done differently if they transfer to another location. In the future, if someone transfers here from Champaign or Columbus, OH, policies and systems will be the same.”

Jumer’s Chateau-Mark Adams, General Manager: “We generally give each new person a copy of the employee handbook, a tour of the area in which they will work, introduce them to their trainer, and familiarize them with the organization. One of the scariest things in the world is to be a new employee and not be taught the simplest things like how to punch a timeclock. Some of the day-to-day activities we take for granted after we have worked here for a while don’t come easy the first few times, and we try to make sure we go over the fundamentals. Our primary focus is to introduce the new employee to co-workers and make sure they know to whom they can go with questions. From the beginning, if we can clinch the idea that asking questions is encouraged, many problems down the line can be solved before they happen. Overall, companies can spend a lot of time training on policies and procedures, but the bottom line is for someone to feel comfortable in their position.”

McDonald’s Corporation-Emily Phillips, Marketing Director: “Some people say that McDonalds has more training programs than the United States Army, so we definitely have a new employee orientation program. The process starts with an overview conducted by the restaurant’s manager, during which the employee learns about various policies. At this time, the new hire receives a discount card valid at many local businesses. After this initial meeting, various videos are shown to acquaint each individual with operation of the restaurant. Then comes hands-on training, when the employee will complete station observation checklists, and they continue training at that station until they feel familiar with it. Employees may also be cross-trained, so they can perform a wide variety of tasks. Length of the training process depends on the position. We have a large management team willing to assist with any questions that arise.”

Illinois State University-Colette Homan, Human Resources Officer: “Once a position is offered, the new employee is given an orientation binder to study over the weekend or week before their job actually starts. This binder contains information on benefits, credit union, safety, training and development opportunities, continuing education opportunities, payroll and holiday policies. One the first day of their new job, I conduct a new employee orientation in my office. At this meeting, the employee will first watch a video called, ‘Welcome to ISU.’ And then we go over university policy. A benefits counselor attends and will have the employee fill out their insurance paperwork and answer any benefit questions. The entire process lasts about thee hours, after which the new employee will report to his other new department where in-depth job training will begin.”