Intro to HRM Lecture 5 - Employee socialization

Employee Orientation & Socialization

Orientation Day“Oh yeah . . . I forgot about you.

I don’t have time today to orient you.

Here’s a policy book . . . go somewhere and read it.”

2Allen Grabo – VU University Amsterdam

Introduction


Employee Attachment & Onboarding:

Why New Hire Perceptions Could Be Costing You Thousands

SummaryEmployee Socialization is a systematic and planned introduction of

employees to their jobs, co-workers, and the organization

Critical for the company and the new employees that

new employees make a positive start with the

organization

• Reduces anxiety, startup costs

• Helps new hires adjust to the social and performance aspects of their

jobs

• Reduces turnover

• Alost half hourly workers leave new jobs in the first 4 months

• New employees must establish relationships and learn new behaviors,

facts, procedures, expectations, and values


Why is it necessary?

New employees can expect surprises:

• Not anticipating the emotional impact of greater responsibility

• Underestimating the difficulty of adjusting to a new work

schedule

• New employees may also need to “unlearn” things that helped

them succeed in previous settings

• Employees get about 90 days to prove themselves in a new job.

• Every company has different rules.

• The faster they feel welcome and understand the job, the fast

they can contribute.


Types of OrientationPassive:

• No one is coordinating.

• Some things may have been developed.

• (30% of organizations do this)

High Potential:

• Compliance and clarification are well covered, some culture.

• (About 50%)

• Just not completely systematic

Proactive:

• All building blocks assessed

• 20%


Employee Orientation – The Four C’s


Connection

• Personal Relationships /Information Networks

Culture

• Norms, values

Clarification

• Understanding of job responsibilities

Compliance

• Basic rules and regulations

Time ScaleOrientation and Socialization can take months

At stake:

• New employee’s satisfaction, performance, and commitment to the

organization

• Work group’s satisfaction and performance

• Start-up costs invested in the new employee: Recruiting, selection,

training, and the time until the employee is up to full speed

• The likelihood that the employee will remain with the organization

(associated costs if he/she leaves)


StagesAnticipatory Stage:

• Before the individual joins the organization

• Person forms an impression about what membership in an organization is like

Encounter Stage:

• When a recruit makes a formal commitment to join the organization

• Individual crosses the inclusionary boundary separating the organization from

the outside environment

• Begins to discover what the organization is really like

Through successful socialization, new employees:

• Accept the norms and values of the group

• Master the tasks they must perform

• Resolve any role conflicts and overloads


Stages

Realistic Job Preview:

• Provides the new employee with complete information about a

job and an organization

• The new employee is given both positive and negative

information

Employee Orientation Programs:

• Designed to introduce new employees to the job, supervisors,

coworkers, and the organization as a whole

• Focuses on the encounter stage of socialization


When to use RJP

Designed to introduce new employees to

• The job

• Supervisors

• Coworkers

• Organization

Then move on to the “encounter” phase.


What do newcomers need?Accurate Expectations

• Insiders normally know what to expect of the situations

• there are fewer surprises to confront them

• Newcomers' expectations are likely to differ from organizational reality

Knowledge Base

• Insiders have the knowledge base from history and experience in the

setting to make sense of the surprising event

• Newcomers generally lack this knowledge

Other Insiders

• Insiders have coworkers with whom to compare their judgments and

interpretations of organizational events

• Newcomers have not yet developed these relationships


Realistic Job Preview

Four interrelated mechanisms:

• Vaccination against unrealistically high expectations

• Self-selection

• Do the job and the organization match their individual

needs?

• Coping effect

• Realistic expectations help to develop coping

strategies for performing effectively

• Personal commitment


Realistic Job Preview - Content

• Descriptive content focuses on factual information

• Judgmental content communicates incumbents’ feelings

• Extensive content contains all pertinent information

• Intensive content implies selective information that is presented

more briefly and forcefully

• Timing: as early as possible

• Before job offer

• Use multimedia to communicate realistic information before hire

• Save more expensive processes for later

• Self-screening will lead to a reduced applicant pool


When to use RJP

• When candidates can be selective about offers

• When the selection ratio is low

• The organization has many more job applicants than

positions available

• When recruits are unlikely to have enough

information available to them to develop realistic

expectations

• Such as with entry level, complex, or “unique” jobs

• When replacement costs are high


Evaluating RJP Effectiveness

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Stage of Entry Evaluation Criteria

Pre-entry Ability of the organization to recruit newcomers

Entry Initial expectation of newcomers

Choice of organization by the individual

Post-entry Initial job attitudes

• Satisfaction with the job

• Commitment to the organization

• Descriptive statements about the job

• Thoughts about quitting

Job performance

Job survival and voluntary turnover rates

Allen Grabo – VU University Amsterdam

Orientation roles: The supervisor should…

• Provide factual information and clear + realistic

performance expectations

• Emphasize the employee’s likelihood of succeeding

in the organization

• Encourage newcomers’ acceptance by coworkers

• Provide (or arrange for) training in job specifics


Orientation roles: The supervisor should…

• Buffer the newcomer from demands outside the work group for

a period of time to facilitate job learning

• Provide challenging initial assignments

• Conduct timely, constructive performance evaluations

• Diagnose problems at work that create conflicts

• Use the newcomer’s arrival as an opportunity to reallocate tasks

or redesign work to improve effectiveness and employee

satisfaction with the work system


Orientation roles: Co-workers should…

• Provide support, information and training

• Help to learn norms of the workplace

• Discourage hazing or bullying

• Act as “buddies”/mentors


Orientation roles: HRD should…

• Design and oversees the orientation program

• Produce or obtain materials (such as workbooks and

seminar leader guides)

• Conduct training sessions

• Design and conduct the evaluation study

• Conduct parts of the orientation program itself

(focusing on such things as available services,

employee rights, benefits, and workplace rules)


Orientation roles: Newcomers should…

• Be in the lead role by being an active learner

• Actively seek out both information and relationships

they feel will help them in adjusting to the

organization


Criticism /Challenges

• Too much emphasis on paperwork

• Information overload and/or information irrelevance

• Too much “selling” of the organization

• Not giving newcomers a chance to discuss issues of interest or

ask questions

• One-shot mentality: Limiting the orientation program to only the

first day at work

• No diagnosis or evaluation of the orientation program

• Lack of follow-up


Case Study


Case Study

• Cleveland Clinic is a healthcare institution that was consistently ranked

by US News as Top-4 or Top-5 provider in the US.

• In the late aughts, the CEO, Dr. Cosgrove, was speaking to students at

Harvard Business School during a case study review of the institution.

One student said that he advised his parent to choose a provider other

than CC due to its culture, which he perceived as being rude to

patients.

• The Clinic created a new program to train 100% of its then-43,000

existing employees and all new hires from 2011 onward.

• The program, HEART (Hear, Empathize, Apologize, Respond, Thank).

• Today, employee engagement scores, government-tracked patient

satisfaction scores and even the US News ranking are higher: we are

now #2 overall in the US!


Case Study


Case Study

• The field of fire fighting has its own set of issues relating that

many private sector and even other public safety and

government agencies do not. The unique hours of rotating

shifts of three separate crews working rotating 24 hours shifts is

much different than a 40 hour work week where everyone goes

home every night after 8 or so hours in an office.


Compliance

• Fire departments operate of several written documents that dictate everything

from day to day station operations to on scene operations.

• SOPs or SOG (Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines) are what the

department operates under on scenes of incidents. Typically left fairly open as

to not be overly specific, they prioritize aspects of incidents to assist in mitigating

the problem as easily as possible.

• Best Practices are more encompassing and dictate how the department

operates as a whole (Training, testing fire hydrants, vehicle maintenance, etc.).

• EMS providers also have a separate written document that acts as a SOG for

paramedics called a Medical Protocol.


Clarification

• Clarification of job expectations is the most apparent regarding

EMS incidents and reporting.

• Each incident requires a medic to write a run report that

documents every step of the incident, from the dispatch through

transferring the patient to the hospital.

• These runs are then reviewed by another member or committee

for both accurate documentation and to ensure that the medic

did everything he or she was supposed to do for that patient.

• Remediation processes are in place if there is ever an instance

of the medic not performing his or her duties.


Culture

• The culture of the fire service is similar to that of the military with

a few obvious differences.

• There is a rank and command system of officers that issue

orders down the line during dangerous events.

• Firefighters wear uniforms, have grooming standards, report for

“duty”, etc.

• As with the military the overall culture is surprisingly jovial

(gallows humor) even during what can appear to be a serious

event.


Connection

• The basic breakdown of how a fire department operates varies

by department, but the overall composition is the same. A crew

is comprised of the members of the department assigned to a

particular apparatus (paramedics ride the ambulance, rescue

techs ride the Rescue…)

• The various crews work the same shift or unit (1 unit, 2 unit, etc.

or A shift, B shift, etc.), each of the three shifts works at a station

(some departments have multiple stations), finally groups of

stations are divided into battalions, sections of the city that are

divided into “response districts.”


Connection

• Bonds and animosity can form based on your crew

• Medics on the ambulance often are resentful of other crews that simply

aren’t as busy as they are and don’t have to write EMS reports

• Bonds are formed within crews that perform together, with medic crews

dealing with both serious life or death medical calls that can be very

high stress as well as calls that are anything but (cold symptoms,

toothaches, etc.)

• There’s an old Arab proverb that fits the fire service nicely: “Me against

my brother, me and my brother against my cousins, me and my

brothers and my cousins against my friends, me and my brothers and

my cousins and my friends against my village, my village against the

other village, etc.”


Break Time

See you in 15 minutes.

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Intro to HRM Lecture 5 - Employee socialization

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