Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
I work for a municipality (not the city) and we do orientation based on your job. So you don't go through a bunch of information you're not going to ever need. However, summer students still have 8 hours of orientation on the first day. Here it involves a little more than mowing grass though.
Things like chainsaws and wood chippers can easily kill you if you are not properly trained. If you don't know the limits of a large riding lawn mower you can roll it.
Another reason for excessive orientation is that students typically either fall in to one of two categories.
1) They think they can do anything even if they have no clue.
2) Are too afraid to ask if they don't understand.
Both are dangerous as they can lead to disaster.
And finally, if someone gets seriously hurt or killed on the job, and under investigation it is discovered that you, as an employer, did not provide proper training you are in serious .
So yes, orientation is boring, but necessary.
All that being said, hours and hours of a motivational speaker seems ridiculous no matter what job you are preparing for.
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I'd almost be fine with that, but if you look at the story their actual training was watching a 20 minute film
I did paving for a living for a private company and my orientation was on the job on the first day while I was working. Don't dive into hot asphalt, don't stick your body parts in moving equipment. If you last the week on the shovel crew we might train you to operate machinery.
There's no reason to have a one day or 2 day orientation session for seasonal employees that covers conflict resolution, a motivational speaker, and a 20 minute film.
To me this is a tremendous waste of time and money.
These are things that don't show up in audits because they're effectively hidden costs. They got paid to sit in a gym, I bet they even factored this into productivity reports. I'm glad this woman wrote this story, I'm willing to be there's a lot more in the way of interesting wastes of money.
Another reason why I can't vote for any of the current members, City Hall needs to be gutted and audited independently.