What is the Difference Between Orientation and Onboarding?

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• What is the Difference Between Orientation and
  Onboarding?
• Do you know the exact difference between
  orientation and onboarding? Not really, right?
  Most of us are often feels confused between the
  terms referred to as orientation and onboarding.
  Both the terms are sometimes referred as same
  and thus are used inter-related. But, to the
  knowledge of most of the people, both the terms
  have different meanings and should be used at
  their distinguished places.
• Difference between orientation and onboarding
• There is a very thin line for the difference
  between orientation and onboarding. Let us have a
  look at the definitions of both the terms so as
  to clearly understand the difference.
• Employee onboarding
• To begin with, onboarding is not a one-time
  process, it can last for weeks or in some cases
  for even some months. It begins when a job offer
  is extended to the candidate and usually ends
  when the candidate is seen fully functional. It
  helps the employees to understand what they have
  to do to successfully fulfill their assigned job
  responsibilities.
• Employee Orientation
• It is one of the parts of the onboarding process.
  It highlights all the relevant and necessary
  information about the company that the new
  employees must be aware of. It is a one-time
  thing and can last just for few hours or for a
  day in maximum.
• Orientation and onboarding are two different
  terms but are used in place of one another. To
  clearly understand the difference between
  orientation and onboarding let us have a closer
  look at their characteristics.
• The characteristics of orientation

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• Strategic nature
• It occurs before the first day
• It involves senior leaders and supervisors
• It targets employees' needs for the job
• Focuses on employee retention and engagement
• To summarize the difference between orientation
  and onboarding, let us state orientation targets
  the needs of the organization and is focused
  majorly towards that and on the other side,
  onboarding takes care of the needs of employee
  retention and engagement.