Motorola’s Paging Products Group created a new division. The initial start-up was 200 employees and it grew to 1800 in six months. Within two years it was at 5000 with two international divisions.

At the beginning the general manager’s biggest concern was how integrate new employees in this vertical growth. How could we get new hires to be productive and minimize the time to productivity. How could we maintain the corporate culture?

The Orientation Passport was created. One the first day of hire at Orientation they were welcomed and given the passport. Employees had ninety days to explore the organization. To accomplish any task they would network with the other employees to find the answers. Some tasks were as simple as getting an employee badge or a parking pass. Other tasks were discussing a topic and understanding why it was important. Finally other tasks demonstrated that they could perform key procedures required of the job.

At the end of ninety days, they met with their manager to review the passport and clarify any unanswered questions. The new hire and the manager signed the passport verifying that all the tasks had been completed. The new hire turned in the signed passport to Human Resources. Human Resources gave the new hire a $50 gift card in return. Human Resources filed the passport in the employee’s personnel file.

After 1 year the passport project was evaluated. 98.7% of all employees had completed the passport within the ninety days and received the gift card. Managers found the new hires became productive immediately and didn’t wait for someone to tell them what to do. Human Resource representatives found they had more time because they didn’t have to continuously follow up with new hires to get tasks accomplished. New hires said that they began this process with some skepticism, but it resulted in them knowing about the organization and especially the people. They had made friends with some employees that they would have never met without this process.

During this year another benefit was recognized. When the organization had audits (OSHA, ISO, EEO, etc) the auditors consistently recognized this process as a best practice. It provided legal documentation verifying the new hire’s onboarding and training.

Finally with this tremendous growth, the employee turnover rate remained well below 7%