A brilliant article published in the Harvard Business Review
The first
few minutes of new employee orientation, if done right, can lead to happier and
more productive workers and, ultimately, increased customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies do it wrong.
In many
firms, employee orientation focuses solely on corporate culture and identity of
the new workplace. There's a lecture about the firm's history and another about
standard operating procedures. There's a packet of information from human
resources, emblazoned with the firm's logo, and maybe a coffee mug to match.
The
underlying message: Welcome. You should be proud to work here. Please fit in
accordingly.
But
research suggests that employee orientation ought to be less about the company
and more about the employee. A research team finds that shifting the focus to
an employee's personal identity leads to an increase in both employee retention
and customer satisfaction.
"The
researchers hypothesized that companies would see positive performance results
by emphasizing employee individuality from day one, testing their hypothesis
through a series of field and lab experiments.
For
starters, they conducted a field study at Wipro, a major business process
outsourcing company based in Bangalore, India, that provides telephone and chat
support for its global customers. Traditionally, Wipro's orientation for call
center employees consisted of an informational session about the company,
followed by several weeks of training in which new call agents) must
demonstrate proficiency in English, as well as an aptitude for following
standard procedures during customer calls.
Individuality
was not just discounted; in some ways it was expressly discouraged. "As a
service role, the job can be stressful, not only because employees must help
frustrated customers with their problems, but because Indian call center
employees are often expected to 'de-Indianize' many elements of their behaviour—for
example, by adopting a Western accent and attitude," the paper explains.
Wipro was
dealing with a big dropout dilemma; more than half of its call center employees
quit only a few months after training. "Wipro presented us with the
problem of figuring out whether there was anything we could do to reduce
turnover," Gino says. "We thought it was the perfect environment to
test whether we could make a difference just by changing something minor in the
onboarding process."
IDENTITY
EXPERIMENTS
In the
field experiment, the researchers divided batches of new call agents into a
control group , individual identity group, and an organizational identity
group, individual identity group
The
control group went through the traditional process, focused on firm awareness
and skills training. The two identity groups received the same training as the
control group, but also an additional hour-long presentation, which varied
according to the group.
For the
individual identity condition, a senior leader at Wipro spent 15 minutes
discussing ways in which working at the company would enable the newcomers to
express their individuality. Next, the new call agents completed an exercise
ranking the individual strengths they would exhibit if stranded on a life raft
at sea; they also spent time considering how their responses might differ from
their colleagues'. Then, the agents answered a series of questions about their
individual strengths such as, "What is unique about you that leads to your
happiest times and best performance at work?" Finally, the agents shared
their strengths with their future office mates.
At the end
of the session, employees in the individual identity group received fleece
sweatshirts embroidered with their individual names, along with a name badge.
They were asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
For the
organizational condition, new employees spent 15 minutes listening to a senior
Wipro leader and a "star performer" at the company talk about why
Wipro was a singular place to work. Next, the newcomers spent 15 minutes
writing answers to questions such as, "What did you hear about Wipro today
that you would be proud to tell your family about?" Finally, the group
members discussed their answers with each other.
At the end
of the session, employees in the organizational identity group received fleece
sweatshirts embroidered with the company name, along with a badge. They were
asked to wear them for the duration of employee training.
Seven
months later, the researchers looked into whether the orientation changes
affected how long the newcomers/agents chose to stay with the company.
"Considering we just changed one hour on the first day of orientation, the
results were amazing," Gino says.
The
turnover rate in the control group was 47.2 percent higher than that of the
individual identity group, and 16.2 percent higher than that of the
organizational identity group. And turnover was 26.7 percent higher in the
organizational identity condition than in the individual identity condition.
Additionally, employees in the individual identity group had garnered higher
customer satisfaction scores during the seven months than those in the control
group.
LESSONS
FOR BUSINESSES
For
employers, the implications of the findings are pretty clear: "Given that
the standard, organization-focused approach of employee socialization is so
common, it would benefit managers to think about an alternative approach where
there's more room for newcomers' self-expression, Gino says. "This is a pivotal
stage of the employee/employer relationship, and there are ways to emphasize
people's individuality so they can bring it out into their jobs. To Wipro's
credit, after seeing the results of the study, the company redesigned its
employee orientation process such that personal identity socialization is a
part of it."
