First impressions are never forgotten.
The relationship between a new hire and an organization begins before the first task is assigned. That first contact — the onboarding experience — either fuels engagement or deflates it. This is true at every level, from a new General Manager to a production line operator.
In most companies, onboarding is a marathon of lengthy presentations covering health and safety, regulations, company history, and executive introductions. Attention drifts. And it is precisely when minds have wandered that trainers choose to cover the most critical topics: FDA requirements, Good Manufacturing Practices, Good Documentation Practices. It is not a good first impression.
Why does this happen? Because operations needs people on the line as quickly as possible. Convincing management to give up even one full day for training is often a negotiation — as if that were an extravagant luxury.
A sophisticated, week-long onboarding program is not a guarantee of retention. Trainees figure out the exam patterns. Some cheat. Others pay full attention — and forget everything by the following week. As discussed in the Learning Pyramid chapter: adults retain very little of what they simply see or hear.
What Effective Onboarding Actually Looks Like
An effective onboarding program is interactive. It creates real dialogue between trainer and trainees, adapts to the group’s experience, and puts people in direct contact with the tools and environments they will encounter every day.
Even inherently dry regulatory topics can be made relevant. Instead of lecturing about the FDA, ask what trainees already know. What have they heard? What do they think happens when a company fails to comply? Draw them into the conversation. Let them build the understanding themselves. The difference between a forgettable onboarding and a memorable one is not budget or technology — it is intentionality.
Preparing Staff for a Cleanroom
At one company, new employees received hair nets, masks, and gloves on their very first day — and wore them for over an hour in the training room. That discomfort, that awkwardness, was the point. The training room is the right place to feel uncertain. The production floor is not.
In the same room, employees practiced gowning procedure inside a mock gowning area marked with tape on the floor. No written exam captures what was being built in those moments: muscle memory, spatial awareness, and a real sense of what compliant behavior feels like. Experiences that are lived are not easily forgotten.
The Lego Exercise
One of the most effective onboarding exercises I have witnessed used a production line and manufacturing instructions — for assembling a cart made of Legos. Some participants managed materials, others assembled, and a third group handled quality inspection. Everyone had an SOP. Everyone filled out forms following Good Documentation Practices.
Teams competed. The winner was the team whose output was correct and whose documentation was complete. In a single session, participants understood their colleagues’ roles, experienced a real production workflow, and — most critically — internalized that documentation holds the same value as the product. The Device History Record was not explained. It was felt.
When a detailed regulatory presentation followed the exercise, trainees made immediate, meaningful connections. They had a reference point. Retention improved — and so did their first impression of the company.
Don’t Forget to Train the Trainer
Holding a group’s attention for hours is difficult work. No one is born knowing how to do it. But it is a learnable skill — one that improves with practice, feedback, and honest self-assessment. Train-the-trainer programs exist for exactly this reason. Some include video recording so instructors can review their own delivery: what worked, what fell flat, what to change.
The quality of the onboarding experience begins with the person delivering it. Do not underestimate the importance of preparing them.
Because the first impression is never forgotten
