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Onboarding: Enhancing New
Employee Clarity and Confidence
Talya N. Bauer
Cameron Professor of Management
Portland State University & Founder
Management Analytics, LLC
ONBOARDING WHITE PAPER SERIES
Onboarding: Enhancing
New Employee Clarity
andConfidence
Executive summary
This is the second of three papers in the SuccessFactors onboarding best practices series. The
firstwhite paper focused on the role of connection within onboarding. This white paper focuses
onorganizational practices designed to help maximize role clarity and role confidence for new
employees. Examples for how to accelerate both role clarity and confidence for new employees
andorganizations employing these practices are described here.
Onboarding defined
Onboarding is a system of processes for integrating new employees into an organization and
making them productive as quickly as possible. When asked, 66% of organizations report having
some aspects of formal onboarding programs beyond simple orientations and 53% invest in
onboarding across a new employee’s first year.1 The business case for effective onboarding is
strong. A Boston Consulting Group study found that onboarding was related to 2.5 times the profit
growth and 1.9 times the profit margin as compared to organizations leaving onboarding to chance.2
The four C’s for onboarding success
The 4 C’s of onboarding include:
• clarification,
• compliance,
• culture, and
• connection3
Clarification refers to the details and context of one’s job including understanding the job
requirements, the norms for getting things done, and how things are described internally and
externally such as acronyms, etc. The sooner a new employee understands his or her job, the
sooner they become more productive.
Compliance refers to the on-the-job basics such as tax forms, employment paperwork, badges,
email accounts, computers, and workstations as needed for a given job. Organizations doing well
on compliance have been able to take these unpleasant and routine aspects of new employee
onboarding and make them less onerous.
SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITE PAPER
ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
CLARIFICATION
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ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Culture refers to learning the unique organizational culture of a new organization. Much like
individuals have different personalities, patterns, and expectations, so do organizations. The more
quickly and accurately a new employee can interpret and understand the overall culture and the
subcultures within an organization, the better their chances for long-term success.
Connection refers to the key interpersonal relationships, support mechanisms, and information
networks that new employees need to establish upon entering a new organization in order to
beeffective.
Focus on clarification
While all of the 4 C’s for onboarding success (see table above) are critical pieces of the onboarding
puzzle, Clarification has a special role in the onboarding process as it serves multiple functions. Role
clarity refers to the what, when, where, who, and how of getting one’s job done. These functions
include direct impacts on important organizational outcomes including:
• new employee job performance,
• job satisfaction,
• organizational commitment,
• employee referrals,
• intentions to remain, and
• turnover4
Research has established that new employees who have clarity regarding their roles and feel
confident in their roles have greater onboarding and organizational success than those who do not.
A survey of 12,000+ newcomers found that clarification was one of the most important of the C’s
because it was the only aspect of onboarding related to ALL of the above outcomes AND especially
related to new employee performance. My interviews with new employees, observations of them,
as well as research on the topic all indicate that when new employees have greater clarity regarding
their role and place within the organization, they are more likely to:
• take risks,
• ask questions,
• learn more about their new job, role, colleagues, and organization, and
• be more effective
Thus, helping to facilitate high levels of employee clarification and confidence serve as important
levers that organizations can focus on to ensure that new employees are up and running as quickly
as possible. Clarification gives new hires a firm grasp of the expectations of them and their role
within the organization to draw upon as they encounter new challenges during their first year with
the organization. It helps to think of clarification as a corner of the foundation upon which effective
onboarding is built. It is difficult to imagine that a new employee who lacks clarity regarding
expectations and his or her role within the organization will be able to do his or her best. Given its
foundational nature, it is critical to think about what organizations can do to help new employees
gain clarity and confidence quickly prior to entry, upon entry, and during their first year on the job.
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ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Clarification and confidence enhancing mechanisms
What specifically can organizations do to help best facilitate high levels of role clarity and confidence
for new employees for the benefit of both the new employee and the organization? There are
several things organizations can to do to enhance clarification and confidence for new employees.
These include:
• Proactivity training: designed to get new employees to play an active role in their onboarding
process,
• Sharing realistic job previews: both during the recruiting and onboarding processes,
• Orientation programs: geared toward clarification and confidence building,
• Training: both formal and informal,
• Leveraging technology to make it easy for new employees to access information, and
• Connect onboarding to long-term development: integrate the onboarding processes with
long-term development processes to create a seamless transition from one to the other.
Experiments at Google and Texas Instruments have shown how effective programs aimed at
helping new employees deal with anxiety and encouraging them to proactively seek necessary
information can help the new employee adjust more quickly, feel more confident, and help the
organization’s bottom line.
While orientation programs are popular components of effective onboarding and most organizations
conduct them, gearing them toward sharing realistic job previews can help the new employee
adjust more quickly and confidently. Both formal and informal training are part of the onboarding
process and are important for helping new employees enhance clarity and confidence. Connecting
onboarding to long-term employee development can help new employees envision a future with the
organization and help to make them feel welcomed and secure in learning and investing in their new
roles. Finally, best practices include leveraging technology so that employees can easily access
information in a self-service manner helps to maximize the effectiveness of new employee
onboarding targeted at building a clear and confident workforce.
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ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Best practices: facilitating clarity and confidence for new employees
Best practice Rationale and research support Company examples
Realistic Job
Previews: Share
realistic job previews
(RJPs) for new
employees both
during recruiting and
throughout the
onboarding process.
Telling both the good and challenging aspects of the job
before you hire so that applicants may assess fit is
critical. In a classic study of new employees, research
found that sharing both good and negative information
about a job to prepare new employees was related to
lower stress, lower need for training, less absenteeism,
greater productivity. Bank of America has a video
entitled “Realistic preview: Customer care positions” on
its website to help potential applicants assess fit by
understanding the “challenges and rewards” of the
positions.5 The U.S. Office of Personnel Management
recommends RJPs6 and has posted “how to” tools on
their website.7 Explicitly linking recruitment and
onboarding so that the information given at both stages
is consistent is critical to avoiding confusion and
maximizing the onboarding process for success.
Bank of America
Texas Instruments
U.S. Office of Personnel
Management
Proactivity Training:
New employee
training specifically
aimed at helping
them take an active
role in their
onboarding process.
Google conducted an experiment where some new
employees were nudged (reminded by being given
information) to be proactive in their quest to master their
new roles. This resulted in a 5% greater proactivity level,
increased productivity for those employees naturally less
proactive by 13%, and led to faster onboarding
progress.8 Texas Instruments created an intervention that
helped new employees reduce anxiety and led to 50%
lower absenteeism and cost savings of 30% for new
factory employees.
Google
Texas Instruments
Orientation
programs: Focused
specifically on
clarification and
confidence-building.
Most organizations conduct orientation programs.
Recent research shows that most organizations offer
them within the first days to first month of a new
employee’s time on the job.9 Orientations have been
found to be helpful- especially when focused on specific
known stressors for employees. Realistic orientation
programs for new employee stress (ROPES) are
designed to do this and blend the power of RJPs with
the timing and platform of the new employee orientation.
Ohio State University’s graduate programs successfully
utilized this process to attain higher levels of academic
success and lower stress than those not attending this
type of orientation.10 Bristol-Myers Squibb has been
described as having a “laser-like focus” where they
clarify roles and help new employees understand how
they fit in.11
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Ohio State University
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ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Best practices: facilitating clarity and confidence for new employees
Training (Formal
andInformal)
Formal training is a time-honored way that new
employees learn a new job as the focus is on acquiring
and honing the key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs)
needed to successfully complete one’s job.12 More
formal training can be especially important for new
college graduates or those with highly technical jobs.13
IBM integrates onboarding with learning. Learning from
peers is a consistently important and powerful part of
onboarding. PwC assigns “connectivity partners” to new
employees. These partners help with learning the social
aspects of the job, as well as recommending them to
specific trainings or giving them informal training and
feedback. Humana has a similar approach.
Humana Inc.
IBM
PwC
Connect onboarding
to long-term
development across
the employee
lifecycle
While onboarding takes place early in one’s career,
connecting new employees to their long-term
development helps them to visualize their future with the
organization. SuccessFactors calls this focus
Development in their approach of guiding, connecting,
and developing new hires to reduce time to productivity
and improving employee retention. PwC emphasizes the
importance of a new employee developing their own
brand and growing across their careers starting with
onboarding.14
PwC
SuccessFactors
Leverage
technology: to help
new hires easily
access information.
Firms such as Kellogg’s and Microsoft leverage
technology to help new employees access information
24 hours a day, have one location to find answers to
questions, and to help new employees understand their
new roles and organization as quickly as possible.
Kellogg Company
Microsoft
Conclusion
In conclusion, effective onboarding is the key to getting new employees up and running both quickly
and smoothly. Organizations able to ramp up new employee role clarity and confidence during
onboarding by specifically identifying answers to the who, what, when, and where for getting things
done enjoy higher new employee performance, higher job attitudes such as satisfaction and
commitment, and decreased turnover. The use of technology to accomplish these twin goals of
clarity and confidence is critical in today’s competitive landscape.
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Author biography
Talya N. Bauer (Ph.D., Purdue University) is the Cameron Professor of Management at Portland
State University in Portland, Oregon as well as the Program Director for The Conference Board’s
Onboarding Talent Council. She is an award-winning teacher who conducts research about
relationships at work in general and onboarding in specific. She has published in the Academy of
Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, and Personnel
Psychology, works with organizations, and has been a Visiting Scholar in France, Spain, and at
Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. She is the former Editor of the Journal of
Management and incoming Associate Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. She serves on
the editorial boards for the Journal of Management and Personnel Psychology. Her work has been
discussed by numerous media outlets such as New York Times, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal,
and Harvard Business Review.
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ONBOARDING: ENHANCING NEW EMPLOYEE CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE
Endnotes
1 Laurano, M. (2012). Onboarding: The missing link to productivity. Aberdeen Group.
2 The Boston Consulting Group & World Federation of People Management Associations (2012). From capability to profitability:
Realizing the value of people management. BCG.
3 Bauer, T. N. (2011). Onboarding new employees: Maximizing success. SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series.
4 Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., & Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational
socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 707-721.
5 http://careers.bankofamerica.com/rjp/
6 http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/other-assessment-methods/realistic-job-previews/
7 http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/other-assessment-methods/realistic_job_preview.pdf
8 Google (2012). SIOP conference presentation.
9 Laurano (2013). See above.
10 Wanous, J. P., & Reichers, A. E. (2000). New employee orientation programs. Human Resource Management Review, 10,
435-451.
11 Wells, S. J. (2005). Diving in. HR Magazine, 50, 54-59.
12 Saks, A., & Gruman, J. A. (2012). Getting newcomers on board: A review of socialization practices and introduction to
socialization resources theory. Oxford Handbook of Onboarding. Oxford, UK: Oxford Publishing.
13 Bauer et al. (2007). See above.
14 http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/04/26/how-to-hire-like-pricewaterhousecoopers/
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