Making Sense of the New Work Environment: How Employers Can Support Newcomers' Onboarding

• In Event: Quality and Assessment in Workplace Learning

Abstract

By entering a new work environment, newcomers strive to integrate on the professional, social, and cultural level of the new job. Through onboarding practices, employers try to promote their newcomers’ integration processes and thus, support their transition into the new work environment. Guideline-based interviews are used to examine how newcomers experience their onboarding phase and how they deal with these impressions. Preliminary results show that newcomers perceive positive and negative events, with most statements being due to inaccurate cultural assumptions about the new employer. In dealing with these discrepancies, newcomers primarily draw on past experiences, individual prerequisites and goals, and interpretations of organizational insiders. Such findings can help to ease new employees’ transition by tailoring onboarding practices to their needs.

Authors

• Stefanie Birkle, University of Mannheim

• Juergen Seifried, University of Mannheim