Page 141 - Successful Onboarding

128 • Successful Onboarding

with higher expectations about the social aspect of the work experience,
given their recent experiences in college; it is critical to meet those expec-
tations as fully as possible. Younger workers are also more likely to enter
with preconceptions regarding excessive, cutthroat competition at work,
depictions of which are popularized in movies and television. Fortunately,
these negative and dysfunctional ideas can dissipate quickly as valued rela-
tions are formed and new hires begin to experience the benefits associated
with support. For older and more seasoned new hires, onboarding allows
a firm an opportunity to exceed expectations as the new hires achieve a
sense of belonging sooner and more readily than they might have thought.
For all new hires, these personal relationships assist with the process of
cultural and strategic orientation.

External personal networks

A third kind of network, the external personal network, also factors promi-
nently in assuring a new hire’s job satisfaction. Personal external networks
include an individual’s broader network of friends and family, as well as
those of their significant others and family members. Although people
spend most of their waking hours at work, the personal relationships they
develop outside the workplace can also affect their job performance, since
happier new hires are more productive and less inclined to leave. This is
an especially important component for recent college graduates and any
new hire who moves to a new geographic location for his or her job.
A number of progressive companies are experimenting with innovative
ways of helping new hires build new social relationships outside of work.
Target realized that many of the hip young designers they recruited from
design hotbeds on the East and West Coast were having trouble adjusting
to life in Minneapolis, so they created a program designed to offer them
more “big-city” cultural opportunities. Realizing that a minority of new
hires were having special difficulties finding a place in that same city, Gen-
eral Mills linked up with other big employers and helped to foster a new
hire group with that same ethnic background. As these examples suggest,
it is important that firms customize their social network facilitation in line
with their employee populations. Firms need to figure out who is moving
to the area, determine their unique needs, and take steps to fill those needs.