Onboarding
[2] Tactics used in this process include formal meetings, lectures, videos, printed materials, or computer-based orientations that outline the operations and culture of the organization that the employee is entering into.
[4] Studies have documented that onboarding process is important to enhancing employee retention, improving productivity, and fostering a positive organizational culture.
[1] Information seeking occurs when new employees ask questions of their co-workers and superiors in an effort to learn about their new job and the company's norms, expectations, procedures, and policies.
In seeking constructive criticism about their actions, new employees learn what kinds of behaviors are expected, accepted, or frowned upon within the company or work group.
This can be achieved informally through simply talking to their new peers during a coffee break or through more formal means such as taking part in pre-arranged company events.
When developing a relationship evaluating personal reputation, delivery style, and message content all played important factors in the perceptions between supervisors and employees.
John Van Maanen and Edgar H. Schein have identified six major tactical dimensions that characterize and represent all of the ways in which organizations may differ in their approaches to socialization.
This type of socialization is commonly associated with up-and-coming careers in business organizations; this is due to several uncontrollable factors such as the state of the economy or turnover rates which determine whether a given newcomer will be promoted to a higher level or not.
Disjunctive socialization, in contrast, refers to when newcomers do not follow the guidelines of their predecessors; no mentors are assigned to inform new recruits on how to fulfill their duties.
Divestiture socialization is a process that organizations use to reject and remove the importance of personal characteristics a new hire has; this is meant to assimilate them with the values of the workplace.
Many organizations require newcomers to sever previous ties and forget old habits in order to create a new self-image based upon new assumptions.
[19] Building on the work of Van Maanen and Schein, Jones (1986) proposed that the previous six dimensions could be reduced to two categories: institutionalized and individualized socialization.
One example of an organization using institutionalized tactics include incoming freshmen at universities, who may attend orientation weekends before beginning classes.
Other organizations use individualized socialization tactics, in which the new employee immediately starts working on his or her new position and figures out company norms, values, and expectations along the way.
[25] Chatman (1991) found that newcomers are more likely to have internalized the key values of their organization's culture if they had spent time with an assigned mentor and attended company social events.
[23] Enscher & Murphy (1997) examined the effects of similarity (race and gender) on the amount of contact and quality of mentor relationships.
[26] What often separates rapid onboarding programs from their slower counterparts is not the availability of a mentor, but the presence of a "buddy", someone the newcomer can comfortably ask questions that are either trivial ("How do I order office supplies?")
[27][28][29] Onboarding a new employee is a process where a new hire gets to know the company and its culture and receives the means and knowledge needed to become a productive team member.
One of the goals of an onboarding process is to aid newcomers in reducing uncertainty, making it easier for them to get their jobs done correctly and efficiently.
[34] A poor onboarding program may produce employees who exhibit sub-par productivity because they are unsure of their exact roles and responsibilities.
While role clarity and self-efficacy are important to a newcomer's ability to meet the requirements of a job, the feeling of "fitting in" can do a lot for one's view of the work environment and has been shown to increase commitment to an organization and decrease turnover.
This impacts the level of acceptance from existing employee groups, depending on the future job prospects of the new hire and their willingness to fit in.
It has been shown that when LGBT employees conceal their identities at work they are a higher risk for mental health problems, as well as physical illness.
[40][41] Employees possessing disabilities may struggle to be accepted in the workplace due to coworkers' beliefs about the capability of the individual to complete their tasks.
[44] Historically, organizations have overlooked the influence of business practices in shaping enduring work attitudes and have underestimated its impact on financial success.
[20][48] Because formal socialization tactics protect the newcomer from their full responsibilities while "learning the ropes," there is a potential for role confusion once the new hire fully enters the organization.
It may be difficult for those individuals to uncover personal, organizational, and role risks in complicated situations when they lack formal onboarding assistance.
This type of communication makes the development and maintenance of social relationships with other group members difficult to accomplish and weaken organizational commitment.
[61][62] Joining and leaving online communities typically involves less cost than a conventional employment organization, which results in lower level of commitment.
[21] New employees who complete these kinds of programs tend to experience more positive job attitudes and lower levels of turnover in comparison to those who undergo individualized tactics.
