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The Effectiveness of an Organizational-level orientation program in the socialization of new hires

A.     A research overview

This research has been done to see the effect of ATTENDING A voluntary, organizational-level orientation training program to new employees on organizational socialization. six dimensions of socialization were used (politics, History, goals/values, People, performance and Language) and were measured before and 1 to 2 months after the training orientation with a sample of 116 employees with different jobs. Results have shown that attendees of the training orientation program were more socialized in 3 of the 6 dimensions (goals/values, history & people) and had significantly higher affective organizational commitment than those who did not attend the training orientation program.

B.      Possible Background or Context

Organizational socialization is the process, through which new employees get to know about their organization, adapt to the new environment, knows about the organization language, and their role. Although socialization keeps on going even after the employee is hired but this research is more concerned about the new hires who are new to this new environment and are more susceptible to organization influence which is completely different than the last environment they were in. For individual to be effective organizational members they need to socialize by learning a combination of information and ways.

C.     Research Methodology

1.      Subjects

The sample in the analysis consisted of 116 newly hired employees, 80 working in different departments and 70 in different jobs.39% of theses employees worked in professional positions, 36% in clerical positions, 12% in technical/paraprofessional positions, 9% in administrative positions, 2% in skilled craft positions,2% in-service/maintenance positions. the average working days for the newly hired employees is 87 days. On Average 83% were white and 70% female, and were 35 years old. In the final sample 41% held college degree and 28% held advanced degrees.

2.      The orientation program

At the time of the study the orientation program was 3 hours, voluntary, and open to full-time employees who were employed for less than 6 months, the goals and structure of the program were known earlier. the program was offered 6 times over the next 9 months with the same materials, content and instructors. the program was advertised in the company’s monthly newspaper. there was 30 employees per session.

3.      Procedure

the researches obtained lists which contained the names and addresses of newly hired employees in the previous 6 months the next two lists obtained had the newly hired employees in the previous 3 months. The procedures followed for the following 2 lists was the same as the first list. A total of 243 non student, non faculty employees were identified in these lists and were sent questionnaires .this 1^st questionnaire assessed the socialization of newly hired employees and demographic INFORMATION (pretraining socialization).142 employees responded to this 1^st  questionnaire a response of 58%.

sessions were scheduled 2 and 6 weeks. Another survey was done to those who attended the orientation program to see what they felt about the program. A 2^{nd questionnaire} was sent to all employees 10 weeks after the orientation program, that is to say 1 or 2 months for those who attended this survey was done to asses the extent to which employees were socialized as well as organizationally committed (Postraining socialization).118 employees answered the 2^nd  questionnaire a response of 83%. Data were obtained from the organization’s records about orientation attendance, job title, department, job classification and date of employment. two of the employees returned the 1^st questionnaire after attending the orientation program and because their response cannot be considered they were eliminated from the sample and the final sample became 116 newly hired employees.

4.      Quasi-experimental design

this study can be described as employing nonequivalent dependent variables and a nonrandom control group. because we hypothesized orientation attendance to impact socialization then we can take out history, maturation as they will not be of any relevance to this measurement.

5.      Measures

A.     Orientation attendance

records were reviewed to see whether the orientation training program was attended or not.

B.     Employee tenure

the number of days employed when the first questionnaire was completed was calculated and used as the difference between the time of hiring in organizational records and the signing of approval.

C.     Socialization

the level of socialization was assessed using the scale of Chao et al. a 5-point likert scale was used by participants to rate 34 items. Because assessment was on organizational-level orientation training program some items were deleted and other items were added.

D.     Reactions

Participants used 6 statements on a 5-point likert scale to assesses their views of the quality and usefulness of the orientation program. Alpha reliability estimate was 0.79.

E.      Organizational Commitment

coefficient alpha was 0.88 and the affective organizational commitment was measured on 8-item scale.

D.     Results of the research

1. Initial Analysis

Of the 116 original sample only 55 attended the program and the rest 61 did not. A series of tests were used to determine any significance between the attendees and the non-attendees. Chi squared tests were used but there was no significance between the two groups either in age, gender, race, job classification but as of tenure those who did not attend were hired longer than those who attended the program. for all six dimensions in the orientation pretraining program there was no significant difference between the two groups.

2.      tests of Hypothesis

the first hypothesis says that employees attending orientation would be more socialized than employees not attending orientation on the dimensions of goals/values, history, and language. As predicted there was a significant difference in goals/values, and history for post training measures as was predicted. As for people which was not predicted there was a significant difference in the post training measure.

the second hypothesis states that socialization would mediate the relationship between attending and orientation and the distal outcome of affective organizational commitment. To support this hypothesis  we need to show A) orientation attendance is significantly related to organizational commitment, B) orientation attendance is significantly related to socialization, C) socialization is significantly related to organizational commitment D) and when controlling for socialization, the relationship between orientation attendence and organizational commitment becomes nonsignificant.

A) has been shown to be significantly related while

B) on the three dimensions of socialization people, history and goals/value was significantly related.

C) was also shown to be of significance when tenure was controlled. of the six dimensions on goals/values and history had significant beta weights.

D) Full mediation can be used for full support of hypothesis 2.

E.      Implications of the research

Several limitations of this study needed to be recognized such as supervisors suppotiveness, motivation to be socialized, intial productivity, individual differences,

2^nd limitation  it could be argued the since employees were aware of the program they  knew what to answer but then this would have shown in the language and politics section and employees would have been more sociable on thses dimensions.

3^rd limitation could have been the generalizability of the study which can be argued that is was within one organization but since employees chosen held different types of jobs from so many different department enhance the generalizability of the study

4^th limitation is the employees in the organization were not fully new because socialization starts sfter the first day or work and this study should have started since the employees have started to WORK IT could be argued that new employees tend to collect information on task and role rather than their organization.

F.      Conclusion

There is nota lot or researches on orientation training but I think that future searches will pressure on the issue of orientation program from the beginning of hiring and long time after hiring.

I think this research had a lot of limitations the sample size was limited to only one organization which could have a lot of information exchange THIS makes it easier for employees to socialize because information exchange is another factor that helps new employees to socialize. Suppose the organization is in business where information exchange is not too much this would not help employees to socialize more.

If the organization was having only Canadian employees this could make socialization easier because same culture and same country but what if there are different cultures in the organization from different countries this should have been taken into account because with many different culture this could make it a lot harder for newly hired employees