Orientation activities include:

• Informing staff in detail of their new or changed roles and responsibilities;
• Informing staff of new or changed organizational procedures, rules, and regulations. When possible this should be done in writing;
• Training staff in the skills they need for their responsibilities;
• Developing a sensitivity to the client's perspective and needs.

Orienting your staff effectively is essential when you are:

• Hiring new staff, to acquaint them with their duties;
• Introducing new services, to help existing staff provide these services;
• Reorganizing, to acquaint all staff with new procedures, rules, and/or division of tasks.

Orientation activities can take a variety of forms:

• A formal presentation
• A workshop
• A staff meeting
• One-on-one discussion
• A role play exercise
• Written materials
• A site visit

Orientation Checklist

The personnel manual should include:

An overview of the organization's purpose and structure, including a description of the duties of key staff and the lines of authority;

Personnel policies, with explanations of benefits, regulations, grievance and termination policies, and policies for time off;

Administrative procedures, with an explanation of each procedure and how it fits into the work flow of the organization. In a family planning program, these procedures are likely to include client registration, reporting, bookkeeping and accounting procedures, inventory, storage, use of medicines and contraceptives, and purchasing. Each section should include an explanation of the procedure and an overview of how it fits into the work flow of the organization. Each section should also include the forms that are used for each procedure, an explanation of how to fill out the forms, and a correctly filled-out sample form.

Tools and Techniques - Sample Table of Contents for a Personnel Manual

Example from Liberia - Family Planning Association of Liberia's Procedures Manual for a Community-Based Distribution Program

Clinical protocols are standard lists outlining what staff are to do for each procedure. They are essential management tools to ensure the safety and health of family planning clients. Protocols enable uniform medical standards to be enforced throughout a system of services.

All technical staff should be provided with a handbook containing the medical and clinical protocols needed to provide contraceptive methods and other health services. This handbook can be used:

• In orientation, to acquaint new staff with medical standards;
• In planning for training, to determine the minimum information or skills that every trainee must master;
• In supervision, to form the basis of a checklist to evaluate each provider's performance and to determine problem areas or weaknesses in provider knowledge, behavior, or skills;
• As a reference for clinical practice.

The following is a sample table of contents of clinical procedures for a family planning service that offers all modern child-spacing methods:

Tools and Techniques - Sample Table of Contents for a Clinical Protocol

Tools and Techniques - Basic Elements of a Clinical Protocol

Managers have a large number of opportunities to improve the performance, motivation, and ability of staff through on-the-job and off-site staff development techniques. These techniques include:

• Expanding staff members' responsibilities through effective delegation and supervision.
• Increasing employee participation in decision making in areas that affect their work, and giving appropriate recognition for their contribution.
• Allowing employees to have paid time off from work to attend professional seminars, lectures, or classroom courses.
• Providing basic and refresher training on a regular basis, as well as specialized training in response to needs communicated by individual staff. (This will be discussed in greater detail in Training for Effective Performance.)
• Providing the opportunity for study tours with other family planning programs inside or outside the country (this may require writing a proposal to obtain funding).
• Arranging for an internship exchange with a collaborating agency (governmental with nongovernmental), which also helps to promote coordination.
• Supporting exchange visits between different functional areas within the organization, such as having a program assistant visit a financial assistant to learn more about how the finance department functions.
• Developing a job rotation program that enables staff to learn the jobs of others within the organization.
• Providing materials to read for self-study.
• Encouraging individual initiatives and suggestions for improving program performance.
• Providing frequent feedback and positive reinforcement for carrying out new responsibilities.
• Establishing an employee career path program as part of the organization's benefits package. (This helps retain valuable staff who otherwise might move on to other organizations.)
• Using daily interaction with your staff and regular staff meetings to impart and share new knowledge and experience.

These activities can effectively upgrade the skills and knowledge of the staff and will promote regular feedback and encouragement.

Staff development is the cumulative result of day-to-day interactions between the manager and the staff. It is a continuous process that takes place over a long period of time. It requires patience and a long-range perspective on the part of the manager. The most critical factor in developing staff capability is to create an environment in which cooperation, communication, and an open exchange of ideas can take place.

The organizational structure will have some bearing on the ability of an organization to carry out different staff development techniques. Organizations that are rigidly structured will find it more difficult to incorporate creative staff development programs, yet organizations that are too loosely structured may lack purpose and the focus necessary for internal coordination and staff commitment. The techniques listed above provide you with some ideas for effective staff development, from which you can devise a selection of activities that is suited to your specific program.

Employing these techniques alone, however, does not necessarily ensure that staff will be motivated to participate in activities for self-development. An organization must therefore provide incentives to employees by offering opportunities for promotions and transfers, for the purpose of matching employee skills to the appropriate jobs and utilizing employee abilities to their full potential.

Staffing Your Program