May 6, 2024

An introduction to new employee orientation

New employees are a vulnerable group. Over 40% of the more serious claims reported to Texas Mutual in 2023 involved employees who had been on the job for less than one year. Building a new employee orientation (NEO) program can help employees learn to apply best safety practices quickly and consistently. This can ultimately lead to a safer workforce, improved morale and lower costs.

What is an NEO program?

An effective NEO program is a series of carefully planned learning experiences that lay the foundation for employee health and safety. It teaches your newest team members that following company safety standards and procedures is an essential part of their role. This program could include a combination of classroom training, self-paced learning, on-the-job coaching and other experiences. These sessions might be led by a supervisor, human resources contact, safety professional or multiple individuals.

Benefits of an NEO program

An NEO program assigns clear safety responsibilities for all employees, fostering a shared safety culture. This can grow your company’s safety reputation, which helps to attract talent and improve sales. You’ll also likely save money through improved productivity from employees who feel safe and valued in addition to reduced injury costs.

Although the direct cost of an injury may be covered by insurance, the same is not true of indirect costs like wages from time lost through work stoppages, overtime pay to make up for lost production, training expenses for a replacement employee and more. Indirect costs may be 4.5 times the direct cost of an injury. You can use the cost estimator from OSHA’s Safety Pays Program to assess the impact of incidents on your business.

Essential qualities of an NEO program

To ensure each new hire receives adequate and consistent training from day one, an NEO program should:

• Be documented electronically or in writing
• Include on-the-job training
• Communicate the organization’s safety philosophy and policies
• Train new hires on safety procedures before they encounter job hazards
• Evaluate employee safety readiness for full duties

Getting started

Documenting your plan electronically allows you to easily make revisions and serves as proof of your program. As a Texas Mutual policyholder, you have exclusive access to thousands of free safety resources in English and Spanish, which includes template NEO programs and checklists. Follow these steps to navigate to our resource catalog:

• Log in to Texas Mutual Online (TMO)
• Select Safety in the top menu
• Choose the Safety Resources tab and select Safety and employer resources catalog

Policyholders can also build an NEO training program in our new e-Learning system, which offers hundreds of safety courses and robust reporting features. The program and journey features within the e-Learning system allow you to combine multiple courses, live trainings and checkpoints into one assignment. With these features, you can create and save a program or journey for your entire company or even specific departments or roles. Get to know our e-Learning system to learn more about the available features and how to access the system.

The effort you put into new employee orientation is an investment in your business that keeps your newest team members safe. You can learn even more by watching our NEO webinar. If you have any other safety-related questions, you can reach our safety department at 844-WORKSAFE (967-5723) or safety@texasmutual.com.