New Employees of the University of Arizona Health Sciences (UAHS) should also contact the UAHS-Human Resources on-site unit at 520-626-4650 to learn about additional orientation activities at UAHS. College of Medicine, Phoenix, employees are encouraged to participate in this orientation via video conference.
Employee orientation programs are much more successful when they are less about the company and more about the employee, according to new research by Daniel M. Cable, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats. Gino discusses the research in this story by Carmen Nobel, which first appeared on the HBS Working Knowledge website. The first few minutes of new employee orientation, if done right, can lead to happier and more productive workers and, ultimately, increased customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, a lot of companies do it wrong.
In many firms, employee orientation focuses solely on corporate culture and identity of the new workplace. There's a lecture about the firm's history and another about standard operating procedures. There's a packet of information from human resources, emblazoned with the firm's logo, and maybe a coffee mug to match.
The underlying message: Welcome. You should be proud to work here. Please fit in accordingly.
But research suggests that employee orientation ought to be less about the company and more about the employee. In their paper 'Breaking Them In or Eliciting Their Best? Reframing Socialization around Newcomers' Self-expression,' published in the March 2013 Administrative Science Quarterly, a research team finds that shifting the focus to an employee's personal identity leads to an increase in both employee retention and customer satisfaction.
'Organizations will talk about recruiting from outside the company because they need new ideas and new blood, but then there is this tendency to shut off the new and basically transfer the corporate culture over to the new employee,' says Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who cowrote the paper with Daniel M. Cable of London Business School and Bradley R. Staats (HBS MBA '02, DBA '09) of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. 'It was interesting for us to think about how part of your identity seems to go away as you go through that process.'
Previous studies have shown that employees are especially productive and happy when employers encourage them to use their individual signature strengths on the job, but historically those studies did not consider the employee onboarding process, Gino says. The researchers hypothesized that companies would see positive performance results by emphasizing employee individuality from day one, testing their hypothesis through a series of field and lab experiments.
For starters, they conducted a field study at Wipro, a major business process outsourcing company based in Bangalore, India,
Wipro (Photo credit: gabig58)
that provides telephone and chat support for its global customers. Traditionally, Wipro's orientation for call center employees consisted of an informational session about the company, followed by several weeks of training in which new call agents) must demonstrate proficiency in English, as well as an aptitude for following standard procedures during customer calls.
Individuality was not just discounted; in some ways it was expressly discouraged. 'As a service role, the job can be stressful, not only because employees must help frustrated customers with their problems, but because Indian call center employees are often expected to 'de-Indianize' many elements of their behavior—for example, by adopting a Western accent and attitude,' the paper explains.
Wipro was dealing with a big dropout dilemma; more than half of its call center employees quit only a few months after training. 'Wipro presented us with the problem of figuring out whether there was anything we could do to reduce turnover,' Gino says. 'We thought it was the perfect environment to test whether we could make a difference just by changing something minor in the onboarding process.'
Identity experiments
In the field experiment, the researchers divided batches of new call agents into an individual identity group, an organizational identity group, and a control group. The control group went through the traditional process, focused on firm awareness and skills training. The two identity groups received the same training as the control group, but also an additional hour-long presentation, which varied according to the group.
For the individual identity condition, a senior leader at Wipro spent 15 minutes discussing ways in which working at the company would enable the newcomers to express their individuality. Next, the new call agents completed an exercise ranking the individual strengths they would exhibit if stranded on a life raft at sea; they also spent time considering how their responses might differ from their colleagues'. Then, the agents answered a series of questions about their individual strengths such as, 'What is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performance at work?' Finally, the agents shared their strengths with their future office mates.
At the end of the session, employees in the individual identity group received fleece sweatshirts embroidered with their individual names, along with a name badge. They were asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
For the organizational condition, new employees spent 15 minutes listening to a senior Wipro leader and a 'star performer' at the company talk about why Wipro was a singular place to work. Next, the newcomers spent 15 minutes writing answers to questions such as, 'What did you hear about Wipro today that you would be proud to tell your family about?' Finally, the group members discussed their answers with each other.
At the end of the session, employees in the organizational identity group received fleece sweatshirts embroidered with the company name, along with a badge. They were asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
Seven months later, the researchers looked into whether the orientation changes affected how long the newcomers/agents chose to stay with the company. 'Considering we just changed one hour on the first day of orientation, the results were amazing,' Gino says.
The turnover rate in the control group was 47.2 percent higher than that of the individual identity group, and 16.2 percent higher than that of the organizational identity group. And turnover was 26.7 percent higher in the organizational identity condition than in the individual identity condition. Additionally, employees in the individual identity group had garnered higher customer satisfaction scores during the seven months than those in the control group.
To further study the reasons behind the findings, the researchers conducted a similar experiment in the controlled environment of a university lab. They recruited 175 college students for a three-hour study, conducted over two consecutive days. The students were told at the start that they would be working on a series of tasks, including data entry. All participants completed day one of the study (receiving $35 for their trouble). They were given the choice of whether to return on the second day (in which case they'd receive an additional $15).
As with the field experiment, some participants were placed in a control group, others engaged in activities that stressed individuality (creating personalized nametags, for example), and some focused on the identity of the organization (such as creating a logo for the research lab).
After the experiments, participants filled out a short questionnaire about their experience in the lab, indicating their level of agreement with statements such as, 'Within this research team, I felt like a distinctive person.' These were meant to measure what the researchers call 'authentic self-expression.'
Lab participants in the individuality group reported higher levels of authentic self-expression than those in the organizational group. Individuality group participants also performed better and faster onBreaking Them In or Eliciting Their Best? Reframing Socialization around Newcomers' Self-expression,' published in the March 2013 Administrative Science Quarterly, a research team finds that shifting the focus to an employee's personal identity leads to an increase in both employee retention and customer satisfaction.
'Organizations will talk about recruiting from outside the company because they need new ideas and new blood, but then there is this tendency to shut off the new and basically transfer the corporate culture over to the new employee,' says Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who cowrote the paper with Daniel M. Cable of London Business School and Bradley R. Staats (HBS MBA '02, DBA '09) of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. 'It was interesting for us to think about how part of your identity seems to go away as you go through that process.'
Previous studies have shown that employees are especially productive and happy when employers encourage them to use their individual signature strengths on the job, but historically those studies did not consider the employee onboarding process, Gino says. The researchers hypothesized that companies would see positive performance results by emphasizing employee individuality from day one, testing their hypothesis through a series of field and lab experiments.
For starters, they conducted a field study at Wipro, a major business process outsourcing company based in Bangalore, India,
that provides telephone and chat support for its global customers. Traditionally, Wipro's orientation for call center employees consisted of an informational session about the company, followed by several weeks of training in which new call agents) must demonstrate proficiency in English, as well as an aptitude for following standard procedures during customer calls.
Individuality was not just discounted; in some ways it was expressly discouraged. 'As a service role, the job can be stressful, not only because employees must help frustrated customers with their problems, but because Indian call center employees are often expected to 'de-Indianize' many elements of their behavior—for example, by adopting a Western accent and attitude,' the paper explains.
Wipro was dealing with a big dropout dilemma; more than half of its call center employees quit only a few months after training. 'Wipro presented us with the problem of figuring out whether there was anything we could do to reduce turnover,' Gino says. 'We thought it was the perfect environment to test whether we could make a difference just by changing something minor in the onboarding process.'
Identity experiments
In the field experiment, the researchers divided batches of new call agents into an individual identity group, an organizational identity group, and a control group. The control group went through the traditional process, focused on firm awareness and skills training. The two identity groups received the same training as the control group, but also an additional hour-long presentation, which varied according to the group.
For the individual identity condition, a senior leader at Wipro spent 15 minutes discussing ways in which working at the company would enable the newcomers to express their individuality. Next, the new call agents completed an exercise ranking the individual strengths they would exhibit if stranded on a life raft at sea; they also spent time considering how their responses might differ from their colleagues'. Then, the agents answered a series of questions about their individual strengths such as, 'What is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performance at work?' Finally, the agents shared their strengths with their future office mates.
At the end of the session, employees in the individual identity group received fleece sweatshirts embroidered with their individual names, along with a name badge. They were asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
For the organizational condition, new employees spent 15 minutes listening to a senior Wipro leader and a 'star performer' at the company talk about why Wipro was a singular place to work. Next, the newcomers spent 15 minutes writing answers to questions such as, 'What did you hear about Wipro today that you would be proud to tell your family about?' Finally, the group members discussed their answers with each other.
An Orientation Program For New Employees Is An Example Of
At the end of the session, employees in the organizational identity group received fleece sweatshirts embroidered with the company name, along with a badge. They were asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
Orientation Program For New Employees
Seven months later, the researchers looked into whether the orientation changes affected how long the newcomers/agents chose to stay with the company. 'Considering we just changed one hour on the first day of orientation, the results were amazing,' Gino says.
The turnover rate in the control group was 47.2 percent higher than that of the individual identity group, and 16.2 percent higher than that of the organizational identity group. And turnover was 26.7 percent higher in the organizational identity condition than in the individual identity condition. Additionally, employees in the individual identity group had garnered higher customer satisfaction scores during the seven months than those in the control group.
To further study the reasons behind the findings, the researchers conducted a similar experiment in the controlled environment of a university lab. They recruited 175 college students for a three-hour study, conducted over two consecutive days. The students were told at the start that they would be working on a series of tasks, including data entry. All participants completed day one of the study (receiving $35 for their trouble). They were given the choice of whether to return on the second day (in which case they'd receive an additional $15).
As with the field experiment, some participants were placed in a control group, others engaged in activities that stressed individuality (creating personalized nametags, for example), and some focused on the identity of the organization (such as creating a logo for the research lab).
After the experiments, participants filled out a short questionnaire about their experience in the lab, indicating their level of agreement with statements such as, 'Within this research team, I felt like a distinctive person.' These were meant to measure what the researchers call 'authentic self-expression.'
Lab participants in the individuality group reported higher levels of authentic self-expression than those in the organizational group. Individuality group participants also performed better and faster onThis is a pivotal stage of the employee/employer relationship, and there are ways to emphasize people's individuality so they can bring it out into their jobs. To Wipro's credit, after seeing the results of the study, the company redesigned its employee orientation process such that personal identity socialization is a part of it.'
NOTE TO READERS: In the next step of this research, Professor Gino and her colleagues are looking to discover which aspects of self-reflection during employee orientation are most likely to lead to a happy, effective workforce. For example, will the results differ if employees reflect on their weaknesses as well as their strengths? If you think your company would be interested in participating in a field study on this topic—and possibly improve employee retention and productivity—please write to Francesca Gino directly at fgino@hbs.edu. To learn about other potential field study partnerships, please visit The Research Exchange.
About the author
Carmen Nobel is senior editor of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
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New employees to your company can be welcomed with an orientation program that makes them feel at ease and like they're a part of the team. Orientation programs vary depending on the industry, the management style and the overall company culture. Your orientation program can provide employees with a proper introduction to your company, what's expected and where they fit in to overall goals.
Tour the Facility
New employees need to become acquainted with their new workplace immediately. Take them on a tour of the office, pointing out essential locations such as human resources, their manager's office, bathrooms, break rooms, the printing area, technology support and the company eatery.
Introduction to Co-Workers
While touring the facility, you can introduce new employee to fellow co-workers. Schedule a formal meeting with the members of the direct team or department the employee will work in for more in-depth introductions.
Review Employee Handbook and Paperwork
An employee handbook contains a company's rules and regulations. It also covers information on company benefits, pay dates, paid-time off, lunch and other work breaks, state and federal employment laws and acts and more. Rather than read each page, highlight the most important sections and have the employee read it during his first week and contact you if he has additional questions. Provide the employee with a signature page that outlines that he has read and understands what's outlined in the handbook.
Review Goals and Job Expectations
A new employee cannot achieve optimal levels of productivity and efficiency with a company if she's not presented with his goals and how they fit with the overall needs of the company or her job expectations. This information should be discussed during new employee orientation, so that an employee can get clarification on any points she's unsure of.
Provide Training and Shadowing
Although an employee may have experience in your industry, he still needs training to learn how your company, specifically, operates within the industry. Training can range from attending seminars, tackling computer-based programs or shadowing an employee who does the same or a similar job as the new employee.
Assign a Mentor
Arriving fresh-faced to a company isn't always a comforting situation for employees, and many times, they seek an informal mentor to help guide them through their first couple of weeks with the company. Take the first step and assign new employees a mentor they can go to with questions or for encouragement.
Schedule a Lunch
Enjoying lunch with a select group of co-workers gives new employees a more relaxed way to meet colleagues and learn more about them and the company. While new hires are often introduced to co-workers in passing, you can arrange a lunch during their first week where a new hire can sit with his manager and high-performing members of the team he's joining. Employees can share common interests, discuss the company culture and answer any questions the new employee has, all while enjoying a meal outside of the office.
Set an Evaluation Period
Employee evaluations benefit both employers and employees by giving each an opportunity to discuss how an employee is performing in his role and what he may need to be more successful. Evaluations also give employees an opportunity to give their employers feedback on their experiences with the company.
Orientation Programs For New Employees
During orientation, inform employees about your company's evaluation process so they're aware of how their performance is reviewed. Rather than waiting a year to provide your initial feedback, set up a 30-, 60- or 90-day review period for new employees. This will give you a chance to see how they're settling into their roles and responsibilities within the company before an annual review.
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Safety Orientation Program For New Employees
About the Author
Miranda Brookins is a marketing professional who has over seven years of experience in copywriting, direct-response and Web marketing, publications management and business communications. She has a bachelor's degree in business and marketing from Towson University and is working on a master's degree in publications design at University of Baltimore.
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