Effective socialization strategies can impact the company bottom line early in a new employee's tenure.
One of my friends recently left her consumer products' firm and accepted a project role in a medium-sized software firm. Over the past two months, I’ve quizzed her about her firm’s assimilation process. Frankly, I’ve been surprised and delighted by the firm’s approach to new employees. They’ve emphasized organizational culture more than her new job. Unlike her organization, far too many firms fail in this fundamental process. And, as a result, the productivity of the employee suffers. But her new firm takes a multi-pronged, strategic approach to its assimilation process. The result, thus far, is one happy camper, who’s digging into her new role with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Her experience reminds me that new employees easily go wrong because most firms provide far more information about the employee’s initial job tasks than about the organization’s culture.
Task information that comes from the top of the organization down to the lowest-level employee is usually specific and narrowly defined. Cultural information, in contrast, is vague or sometimes implied. That's a dangerous situation. Research shows that without effective assimilation processes, gossip often plays a large role in the employee's assimilation. Susan Hafen,at Utah's Weber State University,found that gossip has a major role in enhancing workplace deviance behaviors. Lacking cultural input, new employees have no way to evaluate gossip which detracts from the desired goals of organizational citizenry. Her research serves as an important warning to firms regarding the assimilation process.
The cultural values and principles of the organization and the kind of supportive (or non-supportive) environment has direct bearing upon an individual’s ability to understand the task and its importance. For example, in some organizations, collaboration work is highly valued and rewarded, whereas in others only individual efforts are recognized. The more cultural information is unclear or uncertain, the more the new employee needs help in understanding it. Without detailed cultural information, employees have difficulty assessing cultural information from their new colleagues. That’s a potentially dangerous setting, one that could easily impact long-term productivity.
Employee socialization is also especially important. One of my clients, a senior manager at a major small appliance firm, told me that the first problem he encountered in his job was one that took four years to get over. The facility was one in which the average years of service was about 10 years--yeah. . . there still are places like that. When he first arrived, the employees felt that he could not be trusted and that he couldn’t possibly know what he was doing. His predecessor had retired from the position after 15 years, and had given him his blessing as the new replacement. Still, he was viewed as an interloper and an incompetent by most of the employees--even though he came into the new role with extensive experience. The problem resolved itself after several years, but he told me it was very troubling at the start. An effective assimilation process, with a focus upon socialization, would have made for an easy adjustment. When he was promoted to VP a few years ago, one of the first issues he dealt with was the firm’s entire assimilation process. He emphasized the costs of poor assimilation processes several times as he related that story to the CEO. Once the CEO understood the finances of the problem, my client got the needed support—and made some significant changes in HR.
How do better companies integrate the new employee?
Rather than focusing solely on the formal orientation process, smart companies take a multi-pronged approach to employee entry. Traditional approaches include the formal orientation programs, socialization strategies, training programs, and formal and informal mentoring. Research from as far back as 2004 recommend advanced communication and information technologies including e-mail, web pages, voice mail, instant messaging and video-conferencing. A sizable amount of research and corporate resources are expended on socialization processes. What corporations and especially HR need to keep on the front lobes is that the socialization processes are critical to maintain a dedicated and loyal workforce. Indeed, how seriously the organization takes it obligation to socialize new members determines the degree of turnover and, ultimately, productivity.