The shock of the new – how employees experience coming into an organisation

When was the last time you started a new role? Or a new job?  Can you remember how you felt?

Consider this (not impossible) example:

Ian arrived at his new job a bit nervous.  Eventually he was shown to the floor on which his new department was situated, having been issued with a visitor pass. Arriving at his desk, his manager suggested that as his new PC wasn’t going to arrive for another month, that he introduce himself to colleagues and arrange to share theirs. Ian asked about an induction. “That’s in six weeks,” responded his manager. “Read the company handbook in the meantime.” He then told him he’d be back at lunchtime and left. Ian ploughed through a quarter of the two inch thick file before needing the bathroom.  He had to ask for directions.  On the way back he attempted to get a coffee, but didn’t have any of the special tokens needed to get one, and it didn’t take cash.  Sighing, he returned to his desk and awkwardly asked if he could use a neighbour’s PC to look at the company intranet. The intranet asked for his user ID.  When asking his colleague about this, he was told that a User ID took about 2 weeks to arrive. Grimly, he continued to plough through the handbook.  At four thirty there was a fire alarm.  Ian filed out with the rest of his floor, found himself in the wrong area and therefore wasn’t able to respond to his name on the roll call.  The office was evacuated for the rest of the afternoon while the fire service searched the building for him.

Getting employees settled in their new positions – also called ‘socialisation’ by academics and ‘onboarding’ by business writers – is a focus for organisations as the try to recoup their investment in hiring as quickly as possible.  The problem is that, unless you arrive in a cohort of graduates, organisations often plan it very poorly.  Perfectly eager and enthusiastic individuals can find themselves battered coming into an organisation because they are, in the first instance, off-balance.

The key thing that characterises the academic research on newcomer employees is uncertainty – uncertainty about the nature and requirements of new tasks and uncertainty about how you’re going to fit in to the social network and how you’re going to get on with you colleagues.

Add to this, potential feelings of loneliness and isolation which are initially associated with a new location in an organisation (and even a new location geographically), performance anxiety and a lack of established routines and habits for the new role and you have potentially a very uncertain individual.

Academic research has identified that when people feel uncertain, they experience anxiety and they try to reduce this by either minimising the level or importance of the uncertainty (“I’m sure I’ll soon get the hang of it after a while”) or they look for information to help to increase their certainty.  Another danger of course, is that without guidance, even experienced workers guess, and make poor decisions which can go horribly wrong.  If this information is readily available, their uncertainty reduces more quickly. 

Which means that if people aren’t spending all their time worrying about where they are and what they’re doing, they can concentrate on their performance. 

Which in turn means that the organisation – which might have spent some considerable money recruiting them – can start to recoup their expenditure.

Organisations choose a number of methods to bring people into a company, or into a new role – people are socialised in groups (often graduate recruitment happens this way), or singly; they are thoroughly instructed in the ways of the organisation before they start work, or they learn on the job; they can be given a timetable for their induction, or they can be left in the dark about when they will be “qualified” as an organisational member.  It can be planned programme of events, discussions and activities, or it can be random, where recruits aren’t quite sure what to expect.  They may have a mentor or role model – or they may be left to make their own mark in the workplace.

In addition, they can be stripped of some elements of their identity to have them replaced by other, organisational attitudes (the armed forces is a good example of this), or they can be encouraged to bring their experience to the organisation and not be expected to change.

Regardless of how it’s done, all of the approaches can impact new recruits and what they subsequently do in their roles.  For example, someone who has been socialised in a group is more likely to conform to whatever the rest of the group does – it may hinder independent thought and action.  And for some types of organisation, that’s what is needed.  On the other hand, if someone is being socialised independently and “on the job”, they are reliant on their colleagues for help and support.  This can vary across organisations and may in fact be more hindrance than help.  In addition, because they are doing actual work, their tasks may be more limited because after all, this is real work with potentially real consequences if it goes wrong.  Which may lead them to be bored, or may lead them to build confidence, depending on the individual and the tasks.

So what are you doing to your new recruits? Have you thought whether you simply want them to tow the corporate line, or innovate?  The response to the induction should be considered as an outcome of the process.

And for young recruits in particular, are you providing enough information to calm their anxieties?  This doesn’t mean handing someone an induction pack and sitting them at a desk so they can read it cover to cover – it means leading them through the connections in their new role, helping them to understand how their role fits in with others – not just the nuts and bolts of it. 

For experienced workers, there is often the view that “they don’t need hand-holding, they’ve worked in other organisations before” – but actually, regardless of experience, there is always the need for newcomers to either a role or an organisation to find their feet.  

Is your organisation helping?  Or pulling the rug out from under them?

Karen Drury owns fe₃ consulting.  The notes on which this article was based were generated at a mindstretch® held on 28 April.  Karen runs these events on a regular basis.