we are revising our orientation and I am wondering if any one has a good cecklist for managers to make sure everything is done for the new hire. I am also hoping someone out there has a good idea for the OJT structure. I will take all the help I can get.

Aside from how to get paid,safety, purpose of the department etc.
One question that is always helpful is
What does the new employee/staffer/etc need to know to become initially productive. Does the individual department have a plan for orientation and develpment.APPROPRIATE traineres, mentors selected, goals.

Nero

Nero always has good ideas. Besides those, in our recently designed program we created pre-job, on-job, and a checklist from the day of orientation to 90D afterwards. Pre-job was done by HR-Staffing. On job done by sups. Orientation was done by HR-T&D. That all said, you can come up with great lists but in practice the sups never had time to do it. HR was OK, but they didn't follow up after the program ended.

Regarding checklists, there are alot of orientation books out there with CDs of all the forms you need. ASTD probably has some.

When I was an internal manager of training we structured our orientation to be mobile and upbeat. We started with a meet and greet with refreshments and an icebreaker to help new employees get to know one another so they could start to form relationships early, we then took a tour of the building, talked about organziational history, products and services, and pointed our departments, facilities, resources, etc. The tour was followed by various people from HR and other departments overviewing policies, procedures, forms, etc. At the end of the day we had a team Jeopardy game. We used categories like "Organizational history," "Policies," "Procedures," "Benefits," etc as categories and had questions based on content they heard during the day. We awarded small prices (organizational keychains, etc) to winners and everyone got a welcoming gift. Made the day go quickly and people left with a positive first impression. You can view Classroom Jeopardy and GameShow PResenter software on our website.
Good luck.
Bob Lucas

I think the idea to build specific jeopardy for the work place can be great for me too. I'll probably use the advice given here and surf digg and stumble upon to find good ideas I can work with