What is the part of Socialisation and covers the activities involved in introducing new employees to the organisation?

The first part of socialization is referred to as anticipatory socializationThe period of time before an individual actually joins an organization., or the period before an individual actually joins an organization. To help us understand anticipatory socialization, let’s examine the two types of anticipatory socialization discussed by Fredric Jablin: vocational and organizational socialization.

Vocational anticipatory socializationThe process an individual undertakes as he or she selects a specific job or career. refers to the process an individual undertakes as he or she selects a specific job or career. Pretty much from the moment you understand the world around you, you start being socialized into the world of work. Fredric Jablin explained that there are five influential groups that affect our role anticipatory socialization: family, media, peers, education, and previous organizational experience.

The first form of vocational anticipatory socialization comes from our families. Think back to your early childhood and you may have memories of your parents sitting around the dinner table sharing stories of their workdays. These stories from our early childhood influence us largely later in life when it comes to how we perceive work. The stories we hear from our parents actually influence how we understand what it means to work and how we perceive work life. Furthermore, our families actually instill in us attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and values about work. Even something as simple as the chores you were required to complete growing up informed your understanding of what it meant to work. Later in life, your family encourages you academically and even helps to direct you towards specific occupations. Often this direction is intentional (e.g., your mother wants you to be a physician), but this direction can be unintentional as well (e.g., parents disparage their own line of work or specific occupations). Overall, our families have a great deal of influence on our perceptions of work and different occupations.

The second most pervasive socializer of work today is probably the media. From the earliest moments most American children can sit up, they are consuming one form of media or another. Even children’s television shows like Sesame Street, Thomas and Friends, and Bill Nye—The Science Guy illustrate various occupations, which can have a profound effect on how children view the world of work. Children’s books also can have a direct impact on how people come to understand what work is. The reality is children are greatly influenced by the media, so it should be no surprise that these early impressions of what it means to work learned through the media impact our understanding of the work world. Obviously, as we grow older, we come to realize that these portrayals are often inaccurate, but this early learning still sticks with us and influences our future job and career selection decisions. However, Susan Barber warns us that these portrayals can also lead to unrealistic expectations of what the work world really looks like. Too often television shows depict high-income jobs (e.g., lawyers, doctors, business executives, pop stars, etc.), while more blue-collar jobs are left completely out of the work landscape on television (e.g., carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc.). Furthermore, there is a general tendency in a lot of media portrayals to depict occupations where the income earners are making a considerable more amount of money than the average family in the United States. These inflated expectations often persist into the college years.

The third form of vocational anticipatory socialization comes from our immediate peer group. As we all know, peer-influence is a very important part of growing up and continues to be important into adulthood. In a fashion similar to how we learn from our families, our peers influence our attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and values about work. Our peer groups growing up help reiterate what types of occupations are deemed desirable and which ones should be avoided. Furthermore, we also learn about the world of work by listening to our peers’ stories of their own work experience or the experiences of our peers’ families and friends. These stories help to further solidify our perceptions about the world of work beyond that of our immediate family members.

The fourth form of vocational anticipatory socialization comes from our education. Not surprisingly, education is another very important factor to consider when looking at the landscape of how people are socialized. In fact, our educational system (just like the media) tends to overemphasize certain types of occupations. In an interesting study conducted by Fredric Jablin, he found that classroom activities, discussions, and textbooks tended to overemphasize specific occupations while downplaying other occupations. In addition to this subversive socialization, schools often expect students to write research reports or give oral presentations about possible careers. Furthermore, in public education there does tend to be an over-emphasis on the importance of attaining a college degree. If you look at the United States Census data from 2010, a very interesting picture emerges. In the United States, 19.4 percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree and an additional 10.5 percent has an advanced degree, so rough 30 percent of the population has some form of advanced education past an associate’s degree. When one analyzes the data, people with just a bachelor’s degree make an average of $17,000 dollars per year more than those with an associate’s degree (9.1% of the US population) and $36,464 more on average than those who do not have a high school diploma (12.9% of the US population). However, our educational system is clearly designed to streamline students towards those occupations that involve advanced degrees that will not be attained by 70 percent of the actual population.

The final form of vocational anticipatory socialization comes from previous organizational experiences we’ve personally had. Whether you’ve worked as a cashier at a local grocery store, helped run your parent’s farm, or were just an active member of your local church growing up, we all have previous organizational experience that influences how we view the nature of organizations. Whether you’ve had actual work experience or voluntary associations within the context of an organization, these experiences form our perceptions of how organizations function and what it means to work. Any organizational experience helps you form attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and values about work. One of the reasons internships are often pushed in higher education today is to ensure that students not only get a taste of an occupation that may interest them, but the internship experience helps students develop interpersonal skills in the workplace while developing a work ethic that will become very important as the student enters the job market.

In addition to vocational socialization, there is a second form of anticipatory socialization that needs to be addressed: organizational anticipatory socialization. Organizational anticipatory socializationThe process and individual goes through as he or she attempts to find an organization to join. is the process an individual goes through as he or she attempts to find an organization to join. According to Michael Kramer, we can break the organizational anticipatory socialization into two basic processes: recruiting and reconnaissance and selection.

The recruiting and reconnaissance process and the selection process involves all of the steps discussed previously in Figure 10.1 "Model of Employee Recruitment". When we look at this process from the perspective of the applicant, we see that applicants have to find job advertisements or be approached by corporate recruiters. The applicant needs to ascertain whether the job description is a good fit for her or his educational background, skill set, and cultural preferences. During the organizational anticipatory socialization stage, both the applicant and the organization are making determinations of person-organization fit.

Chances are, if you’ve ever held a job, you’ll have experienced some form of employee onboarding. From the moment you walk into an office on your first day, there are a host of new faces to meet, processes to learn, and technology to set up — not to mention the tedious task of filling out a mountain of initial paperwork. All of these activities are part of employee onboarding at any company.

But what is employee onboarding, exactly?

According to the Society for Human Resources Development (SHRM), employee onboarding (also known as organizational socialization) is the “process of helping new hires adjust to social and performance aspects of their new jobs quickly and smoothly, and learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively within an organization.”

In short, employee onboarding involves the processes that help you ensure that your new hires get started on the right foot. These processes can be broken down into two categories:

Formal onboarding encompasses the organized tasks and procedures that help a new employee adjust to his or her new position. Under formal onboarding, new hires are often segregated from existing employees to experience coordinated activities for orientation, in-classroom training, and socialization.
Informal onboarding refers to the ad hoc and semi-organized activities by which a new employee learns about his or her new job. Informal onboarding can include job shadowing and impromptu one-on-one coaching or meetings with management and new colleagues, as well as the minutiae of getting started at a company, such as receiving badges and equipment.

Regardless of whether an organization chooses formal onboarding, informal onboarding, or a mix of both, getting new hires up to speed is an expensive task. According to management consultants Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen in their book, Successful Onboarding, companies spend up to 30% of a new hire’s annual salary during the onboarding process.

While the expense of onboarding new employees can be daunting, it’s money that’s well spent — a centralized, properly resourced process of welcoming new employees may prevent early turnover for as many as 1 in 4 new hires. And the faster that your new hires feel welcomed and adjusted to their new roles, the faster that they can begin contributing value to your company.

As your workforce grows, your employees are more distributed than ever – you might find employees in the main office, others working fully remotely or working from home certain days of the week, and even frontline staff supporting customers. Gathering trainers and teams for in-person training is an inefficient process that takes up a staggering 85% of training budgets – a figure that’s quickly becoming untenable in the era of remote work.

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