Making employees feel empowered is much more than one day show. Hopefully, its going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
My (Extremely badly put :() point was, why does it matter so much to make new hires productive as a race to zero countdown? If a employee going to work at an average for 2 years, to me, it feels OK to give them sometime to get accustomed to new environment.
I'd say it's a lot more fun than going home thinking "Damn that was a lot of paperwork. I hope I can get a computer tomorrow and start to work.."
I mean, c'mon, it's not rocket science these days to get a devbox up and running and talking to a svn or git server.