The document discusses best practices for employee orientation and socialization, noting that it is a critical process for helping new employees adjust to their jobs and the organization. Effective orientation includes connection through relationships, clarification of job responsibilities, understanding the organizational culture and compliance with basic rules. The stages of socialization are outlined as anticipatory, encounter and adjustment, with realistic job previews and orientation programs aiming to facilitate the encounter stage.

1. Employee Orientation
& Socialization

2. 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.”
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3. Introduction
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Employee Attachment & Onboarding:
Why New Hire Perceptions Could Be Costing You Thousands

4. Summary
Employee 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
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5. 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.
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6. Types of Orientation
Passive:
• 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%
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7. Employee Orientation – The Four C’s
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Connection
• Personal Relationships /Information Networks
Culture
• Norms, values
Clarification
• Understanding of job responsibilities
Compliance
• Basic rules and regulations

8. Time Scale
Orientation 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)
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9. Stages
Anticipatory 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
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10. 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
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12. When to use RJP
Designed to introduce new employees to
• The job
• Supervisors
• Coworkers
• Organization
Then move on to the “encounter” phase.
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14. 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
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15. 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
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16. 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
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17. 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
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18. 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
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19. 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
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20. 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
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21. 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
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22. 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)
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23. 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
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24. 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
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25. Case Study
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26. 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!
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27. Case Study
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28. 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.
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29. 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.
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30. 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.
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31. 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.
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32. 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.”
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33. 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.”
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34. Break Time
See you in 15 minutes.
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