I'm in the process of re-developing our new hire orientation session, for non-managerial staff. I'm curious about what some of your favorite introduction activities are (& why), so participants from a variety of departments and can get to know each. In the past I've used participants interviewing each other, and that works well, but I'd like to get additional creative ideas. I'm particularly interested in ones that can be built upon to introduce the first topic: company structure and history.

Also, what pre-work have you found successful for new hire orientation? I'm reducing the amount of 'telling' in the delivery, and feel like pre-work can be one way to accomplish that. (Participants may be on-the-job from a few days to a few weeks prior to attending the orientation session. In that time our managers and HR professionals will oversee their on-boarding, and they will be introduced to an online new hire checklist for compliance activities and resources.)

Thanks in advance for your time and ideas!
Jim

One of the activities we found works well is to send people in small teams on a scavenger hunt where they need to go and find things in different departments.

An exercise that I've used successfully - and this works for people who don't know each other at all, and also for people who have worked together for a while - is this: Hand out index cards and ask everyone to write down four statements about themselves that most people wouldn't know about them. Give them a few examples (i.e. I was a singer in a C&W Band after college) and tell them that one of their statements must be false. Then have them all go around the room reading their statements and have the others guess which statement is false.

Regarding pre-work, perhaps you can have everyone write down three questions they would like to have answered in Orientation and tell them that they need to bring them as their "ticket" into the session.

Sorry - in the exercise I explained above, they should take turns reading their statements aloud - not actually go around the room!