Back in the late 60s/70s, when I was in university, I knew a bunch of IBMers (those were the days when your System/360-67 came with a flock of IBM staff). The standard for onboarding was that during the first 6 months, a new hire was flown here and there for courses. The goal was to make them feel valued as an IBMer, so that they'd want to stay forever.
That sort of thing probably made more sense when it wasn't at all uncommon for people to stay with the company for a decade or decades. I know a number of people at IBM with tenures in the 25 to 30 year range.
