ONBOARDING WHITE PAPER SERIES
Onboarding: Enhancing New Employee Clarity and Confidence Talya N. Bauer Cameron Professor of Management Portland State University & Founder Management Analytics, LLC
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
CLARIFICATION
Onboarding: Enhancing New Employee Clarity and Confidence Executive summary This is the second of three papers in the SuccessFactors onboarding best practices series. The first white paper focused on the role of connection within onboarding. This white paper focuses on organizational practices designed to help maximize role clarity and role confidence for new employees. Examples for how to accelerate both role clarity and confidence for new employees and organizations employing these practices are described here.
Onboarding defined Onboarding is a system of processes for integrating new employees into an organization and making them productive as quickly as possible. When asked, 66% of organizations report having some aspects of formal onboarding programs beyond simple orientations and 53% invest in onboarding across a new employee’s first year.1 The business case for effective onboarding is strong. A Boston Consulting Group study found that onboarding was related to 2.5 times the profit growth and 1.9 times the profit margin as compared to organizations leaving onboarding to chance.2
The four C’s for onboarding success The 4 C’s of onboarding include: • • • •
clarification, compliance, culture, and connection3
Clarification refers to the details and context of one’s job including understanding the job requirements, the norms for getting things done, and how things are described internally and externally such as acronyms, etc. The sooner a new employee understands his or her job, the sooner they become more productive. Compliance refers to the on-the-job basics such as tax forms, employment paperwork, badges, email accounts, computers, and workstations as needed for a given job. Organizations doing well on compliance have been able to take these unpleasant and routine aspects of new employee onboarding and make them less onerous.
2
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Culture refers to learning the unique organizational culture of a new organization. Much like individuals have different personalities, patterns, and expectations, so do organizations. The more quickly and accurately a new employee can interpret and understand the overall culture and the subcultures within an organization, the better their chances for long-term success. Connection refers to the key interpersonal relationships, support mechanisms, and information networks that new employees need to establish upon entering a new organization in order to be effective.
Focus on clarification While all of the 4 C’s for onboarding success (see table above) are critical pieces of the onboarding puzzle, Clarification has a special role in the onboarding process as it serves multiple functions. Role clarity refers to the what, when, where, who, and how of getting one’s job done. These functions include direct impacts on important organizational outcomes including: • • • • • •
new employee job performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employee referrals, intentions to remain, and turnover4
Research has established that new employees who have clarity regarding their roles and feel confident in their roles have greater onboarding and organizational success than those who do not. A survey of 12,000+ newcomers found that clarification was one of the most important of the C’s because it was the only aspect of onboarding related to ALL of the above outcomes AND especially related to new employee performance. My interviews with new employees, observations of them, as well as research on the topic all indicate that when new employees have greater clarity regarding their role and place within the organization, they are more likely to: • • • •
take risks, ask questions, learn more about their new job, role, colleagues, and organization, and be more effective
Thus, helping to facilitate high levels of employee clarification and confidence serve as important levers that organizations can focus on to ensure that new employees are up and running as quickly as possible. Clarification gives new hires a firm grasp of the expectations of them and their role within the organization to draw upon as they encounter new challenges during their first year with the organization. It helps to think of clarification as a corner of the foundation upon which effective onboarding is built. It is difficult to imagine that a new employee who lacks clarity regarding expectations and his or her role within the organization will be able to do his or her best. Given its foundational nature, it is critical to think about what organizations can do to help new employees gain clarity and confidence quickly prior to entry, upon entry, and during their first year on the job.
3
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Clarification and confidence enhancing mechanisms What specifically can organizations do to help best facilitate high levels of role clarity and confidence for new employees for the benefit of both the new employee and the organization? There are several things organizations can to do to enhance clarification and confidence for new employees. These include: • Proactivity training: designed to get new employees to play an active role in their onboarding process, • Sharing realistic job previews: both during the recruiting and onboarding processes, • Orientation programs: geared toward clarification and confidence building, • Training: both formal and informal, • Leveraging technology to make it easy for new employees to access information, and • Connect onboarding to long-term development: integrate the onboarding processes with long-term development processes to create a seamless transition from one to the other. Experiments at Google and Texas Instruments have shown how effective programs aimed at helping new employees deal with anxiety and encouraging them to proactively seek necessary information can help the new employee adjust more quickly, feel more confident, and help the organization’s bottom line. While orientation programs are popular components of effective onboarding and most organizations conduct them, gearing them toward sharing realistic job previews can help the new employee adjust more quickly and confidently. Both formal and informal training are part of the onboarding process and are important for helping new employees enhance clarity and confidence. Connecting onboarding to long-term employee development can help new employees envision a future with the organization and help to make them feel welcomed and secure in learning and investing in their new roles. Finally, best practices include leveraging technology so that employees can easily access information in a self-service manner helps to maximize the effectiveness of new employee onboarding targeted at building a clear and confident workforce.
4
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Best practices: facilitating clarity and confidence for new employees Best practice
Rationale and research support
Realistic Job Previews: Share realistic job previews (RJPs) for new employees both during recruiting and throughout the onboarding process.
Telling both the good and challenging aspects of the job before you hire so that applicants may assess fit is critical. In a classic study of new employees, research found that sharing both good and negative information about a job to prepare new employees was related to lower stress, lower need for training, less absenteeism, greater productivity. Bank of America has a video entitled “Realistic preview: Customer care positions” on its website to help potential applicants assess fit by understanding the “challenges and rewards” of the positions.5 The U.S. Office of Personnel Management recommends RJPs6 and has posted “how to” tools on their website.7 Explicitly linking recruitment and onboarding so that the information given at both stages is consistent is critical to avoiding confusion and maximizing the onboarding process for success.
Proactivity Training: New employee training specifically aimed at helping them take an active role in their onboarding process.
Google conducted an experiment where some new employees were nudged (reminded by being given information) to be proactive in their quest to master their new roles. This resulted in a 5% greater proactivity level, increased productivity for those employees naturally less proactive by 13%, and led to faster onboarding progress.8 Texas Instruments created an intervention that helped new employees reduce anxiety and led to 50% lower absenteeism and cost savings of 30% for new factory employees.
Orientation programs: Focused specifically on clarification and confidence-building.
Most organizations conduct orientation programs. Recent research shows that most organizations offer them within the first days to first month of a new employee’s time on the job.9 Orientations have been found to be helpful- especially when focused on specific known stressors for employees. Realistic orientation programs for new employee stress (ROPES) are designed to do this and blend the power of RJPs with the timing and platform of the new employee orientation. Ohio State University’s graduate programs successfully utilized this process to attain higher levels of academic success and lower stress than those not attending this type of orientation.10 Bristol-Myers Squibb has been described as having a “laser-like focus” where they clarify roles and help new employees understand how they fit in.11
Company examples Bank of America Texas Instruments U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Google Texas Instruments
Bristol-Myers Squibb Ohio State University
5
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Best practices: facilitating clarity and confidence for new employees Training (Formal and Informal)
Formal training is a time-honored way that new employees learn a new job as the focus is on acquiring and honing the key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) needed to successfully complete one’s job.12 More formal training can be especially important for new college graduates or those with highly technical jobs.13 IBM integrates onboarding with learning. Learning from peers is a consistently important and powerful part of onboarding. PwC assigns “connectivity partners” to new employees. These partners help with learning the social aspects of the job, as well as recommending them to specific trainings or giving them informal training and feedback. Humana has a similar approach.
Connect onboarding to long-term development across the employee lifecycle
While onboarding takes place early in one’s career, connecting new employees to their long-term development helps them to visualize their future with the organization. SuccessFactors calls this focus Development in their approach of guiding, connecting, and developing new hires to reduce time to productivity and improving employee retention. PwC emphasizes the importance of a new employee developing their own brand and growing across their careers starting with onboarding.14
Leverage technology: to help new hires easily access information.
Firms such as Kellogg’s and Microsoft leverage technology to help new employees access information 24 hours a day, have one location to find answers to questions, and to help new employees understand their new roles and organization as quickly as possible.
Humana Inc. IBM PwC
PwC SuccessFactors
Kellogg Company Microsoft
Conclusion In conclusion, effective onboarding is the key to getting new employees up and running both quickly and smoothly. Organizations able to ramp up new employee role clarity and confidence during onboarding by specifically identifying answers to the who, what, when, and where for getting things done enjoy higher new employee performance, higher job attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment, and decreased turnover. The use of technology to accomplish these twin goals of clarity and confidence is critical in today’s competitive landscape.
6
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Author biography Talya N. Bauer (Ph.D., Purdue University) is the Cameron Professor of Management at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon as well as the Program Director for The Conference Board’s Onboarding Talent Council. She is an award-winning teacher who conducts research about relationships at work in general and onboarding in specific. She has published in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Personnel Psychology, works with organizations, and has been a Visiting Scholar in France, Spain, and at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. She is the former Editor of the Journal of Management and incoming Associate Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. She serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Management and Personnel Psychology. Her work has been discussed by numerous media outlets such as New York Times, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.
7
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Endnotes 1
Laurano, M. (2012). Onboarding: The missing link to productivity. Aberdeen Group.
2 The Boston Consulting Group & World Federation of People Management Associations (2012). From capability to profitability: Realizing the value of people management. BCG.
Bauer, T. N. (2011). Onboarding new employees: Maximizing success. SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series.
3
4 Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., & Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 707-721.
5
http://careers.bankofamerica.com/rjp/
6
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/other-assessment-methods/realistic-job-previews/
7
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/other-assessment-methods/realistic_job_preview.pdf
8
Google (2012). SIOP conference presentation.
9
Laurano (2013). See above.
10 Wanous, J. P., & Reichers, A. E. (2000). New employee orientation programs. Human Resource Management Review, 10, 435-451.
11
Wells, S. J. (2005). Diving in. HR Magazine, 50, 54-59.
Saks, A., & Gruman, J. A. (2012). Getting newcomers on board: A review of socialization practices and introduction to socialization resources theory. Oxford Handbook of Onboarding. Oxford, UK: Oxford Publishing.
12
13
Bauer et al. (2007). See above.
14
http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/04/26/how-to-hire-like-pricewaterhousecoopers/
8
©2013 SuccessFactors, Inc. All rights reserved. SuccessFactors Global Headquarters One Tower Plaza South San Francisco, 94080
TOLL FREE 800 809 9920 PHONE 650 645 2000 FAX 650 645 2099 EMEA +45 33 349 349 APAC +612 9238 6680
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SuccessFactors. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SuccessFactors and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SuccessFactors and its affiliated companies for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SuccessFactors shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SuccessFactors products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. SuccessFactors products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks of registered trademarks of SuccessFactors Inc.(and SAP) in the United States and other countries.
