The Role of Organizational Culture and Preparing the New Employee - Research Paper Example

Emerging Issues Project B. Executive summary The research report is aimed at understanding the role of organizational culture in the preparation of new employees within an organization. This is considered as an emerging issue in the human resource management domain. The research report is supported by suitable background of the topic related to organizational culture and the process of preparation of the new hires in an organization. The reasons why this issue is selected and why this issue may be of critical importance in the future are discussed. The views of selected informants are collected through suitable research methodologies, and their views are analyzed to understand the practical implication of this issue in various organizations. Two major federal laws related to the organizational culture and employee nondiscrimination are discussed and explained. The report is concluded by providing suitable recommendations to the organizations facing this issue. The recommendations are given about how these organizations can minimize the challenges related to the preparation of new hires in the organization and how they can develop suitable human resource practices and organization culture to support the preparing and development of the new employees. C. Background of the issue The current business scenario has seen many major changes in the organizational and human resource practices in different businesses across the world. Globalization and workforce diversity have been emerging aspects which have created the importance of maintaining a suitable organizational culture and integrating the organizational culture within the workforce of an organization. Maintaining a perfectly balanced organizational culture is not an easy task. Human resource practitioners and managers are facing various challenges in the current globally integrated business scenario evolving from trends such as shifts in the political and legal environments across the world, advances in information technology, workforce diversity, increasing practices of outsourcing and offshore business activities and globalization. These changes create pressure on human resource professionals to recruit, develop and retain talented and skilled employees within the business. These challenges are great in magnitude and cannot be ignored by the organizations and HR practitioners across the globe. The human resource management systems are necessarily built and modified to become almost totally equipped to meet the challenges brought about by globalization and the integration of cross cultural diversity in the workforce of the businesses. This is especially relevant for the multinational organizations opening up their businesses in different regions of the globe. The employee groups of an organization are heterogeneous in nature and come from different social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This makes it even more important to establish an organizational culture that is unbiased and suitable for the employees from all backgrounds and a culture which is able to function by overcoming the language and behavioral barriers demonstrates among the diverse workgroup. The understanding and acceptance of the organizational culture by the employees is critical in driving the performance of the employees and preparing them to meet unforeseen and emerging challenges in their job responsibility within the organization. Various research made on the aspect of the preparation of new employees within an organization indicates that the employees look for certain basic characteristics from their job. The employees, especially young employees, look for interesting and challenging job roles: excellent management, scope of continuous learning, the streamlining of the organizational objective with their personal values, flexibility and the ability to participate in the work environment, diversity and biasedness in the workforce, use of advanced technology in the workplace and the scope to be a part of a team contributing positively to the growth and performance of the organization. An organization can ensure the provision of all these factors only through the basic aspect of preparing the new employees to accept and become positively oriented towards the existing organizational culture as practiced within the organization. Organizational culture includes the formal practices embedded in the day to day workings of the cultural members of the organization. The manifestation of organizational culture includes both formal and informal practices. The formal practices include job descriptions, organizational structure, hierarchical structure and other documented policies of the organization. The informal practices include the behavior norms and how things are to be done form the behavioral perspective in the organization. The manifestations of organizational culture also encompass the values and principles followed by the organization. Therefore, it is essential for preparing the new employees to the organizational culture so that they can understand the values and content themes associated with the organization. The existing cultural values are likely to be interpreted, enacted and evaluated in different ways by the employees depending on their backgrounds and differences in religion, beliefs, experiences, interests and responsibilities. An organizational culture may reflect harmony or conflict depending on the ambiguities existing among the employees and the prevailing organizational culture. The preparation of a new employee to adapt to the existing organizational culture and practices involves the use of a robust and detailed orientation plan especially designed to suit the organization and meet the objectives of the human resource planning in the long term. An orientation program for a new employee should consist of engaging the employees, emphasizing on the organizational culture, welcoming the employees onboard with enthusiasm and involving the senior management in the initiation process. The preparation of a new employee for an organization should not be considered as an event; rather, it should be considered as a continuous process over the first 90 days that an employee requires to assimilate the practices and the work environment of the organization. D. Importance of the issue The alignment of the organizational culture with the personal values and beliefs of the employees is critical for the success of the organization in maintaining sustainability as well as for retaining a bigger pool of talent within the organization. The understanding of the basic aspects of the organizational culture and the association of the employees with these values and aspects helps to create loyalty and motivation on the part of the employees. New opportunities arising in different organizations make it easier for talented employees to switch their organizations. However, an understanding and assimilation of the cultural value of the organization may help the company to retain the employees for a longer period of time (Sims and Julie 59). This is because an employee is likely to stay in a company if his personal morale is congruent with the organizational values and ethics. The investment of organizations to recruit new employees and training and developing them is high, both in terms of capital as well as time. This process starts from day one when the new employees come on board. Therefore, it is critical for the human resources management of an organization to design a robust and extensive employee orientation program to make new staff aware of the organizational values, policies, ethics and other aspects. Newcomer turnover is a major problem faced by the organizations across the globe. In case a new employee leaves the organization, the organizations have almost no time or scope to recoup the investments that they have done for recruiting and training the new employees. Therefore, the human resource managers are paying a great deal of attention on the job satisfaction and motivation of the employees. This can be done effectively by aligning the interests of the employees with that of the business. If the new employees are able to identify and connect to the existing organizational beliefs, processes and values, the chances of their staying in the company increase by almost 40%. Socialization is an important trend within the organizations and the recruitment processes. Socialization is described as the process through which the new employees acquire the necessary behavior, attitude and knowledge that are necessary for them to be actively involved in the organization. Socialization is a continuous process that starts from the pre-joining stage and can go on for almost a year after the joining of the new employee. Socialization acts as an important process which supports the new employees to adapt to the organizational culture and processes, communicate with their co-workers, develop effective work relationships and find a place for them within the organization. The socialization process is of utmost importance for preparing a new employee to suit his job role and develop as an active member of the organization. The process of socialization can be developed in three phases including anticipatory socialization, encounter, and settling in for the new employees. The anticipatory socialization stage starts before the new employees join the organization. The interactions with the representatives of the organization including the human resource managers and the recruiters influence the development of expectations and formation of ideas about the organization in the minds of the new employees prior to their actual joining. Secondly, the encounter phase begins when the new employees start doing their job and learn about their job roles and expectations from them. The encounter phase also consists of the training and development phase including the on-job- training (OJT) phase. In this stage, the managers and human resource practitioners communicate with the employees to create a positive view on the part of the employees regarding the existing organizational culture. Without being able to perceive the organizational culture as a positive one, the new employees would not be able to relate themselves with their role. On the other hand, creating a proper understanding and positive orientation towards the organization culture would help the organization to build a high quality work environment within the business. Lastly, settling in is the last phase of socialization in which the new employees start to become more comfortable and in place with their job responsibilities and their work relationships. In this stage, the new employees would be much interested in appraisals and assessment of their performances and in getting more involved in exploring the career opportunities and growth aspects within the organization. The changing business environment emphasizes the need to actively involve new employees in the organizational activities. A high rate of attrition of the employees and a high new employee turnover are greatly non-desired by all the organizations across the globe, irrespective of their capacity or functioning. Therefore, much importance is given to take significant steps for retaining the employees for a long term within an organization. This helps to retain the developed talent within the organization, benefits from investing in the training and development processes as well as saves the cost of new recruitment processes and training that would have been necessary to hire replacements for employees leaving the company. Therefore, making the new employees understand and relate to the organization is culture is a critical emerging issue in the human resource management domain which, if managed carefully, may create a high level of sustainability and competitiveness of an organization. E. View of the informants Kayne and Wolff are the informants in this article, according to their experience in diverse organizations. It takes time and effort for teams with poor relationships to trust one another and effectively work together again. Cultural dominance and insensitivity remains a common problem among the team. Oftenly, people of different colors find that when they are in the minority in an organization, they are asked to teach others about their culture. Instead, everyone has to take the initiative in educating oneself. According to Kayne and Wolff, in organizations where white people are the majority, people of color may be expected to conform to white standards to become bicultural. This is hard to sustain. Members of a culturally competent organization do not approach fellow members with stereotypical attitudes or generalize about an entire people based on an experience of one person. organization vision development Involves people from all the cultures. On recruitment, Kayne and Wolff recommends diverse groups from the community at the organization’s convenience. This will reduce tokenism, paternalism, and inequality among the people who join the organization later. Development of the organization will also reflect many perspectives, according to Kayne and Wolff. The first step in honouring the culture is changing ones appearance of membership. Developing rules and using them will help to establish shared norms, respectful conduct and protection against harmful trait. This is accordong to them. They are also suggesting that people should be supported to create qualities such as patience, empathy, trust, tolerance and nonjudgmental attitude. Training on diversity is only but an event that occurs once henc cannot change one’s behavior. It is therefore advisable to learn about cultural diversity. Kayne and Wolff are suggesting that wokers should: Share work and power and develop systems that accommodate equity of voice, visibility and responsibility among all the teams. Language is very key in the organization communication, without which, there would be language barrier.To breach the language barrier, they observed that the management should do the following: Organize meetings with the bilingual translators. Determine if the meeting will be bilingual or not so that you divide the meeting into sub groups if at least half of the group talks more than one language. Ensure that the discussion is conducted only in languages that are used by the members of the organization Use multicultural terms and phrases that describe cultural relations as they should be The employees may have fewer differences than similarities which is essential for effective working relationships. F. Implications from the argument Organizational culture depends on analysis and identification of the factors that conclude the effectiveness of the organization. This aims to get employees commitment which leads to improvement in the productivity. According to the informant’s views, introducing new employees with norms, values and objectives of the organization is fundamental in understanding the organizational culture. Consequently, it is the responsibility of the management to introduce organizational culture to its employees so as to assist them to get familiar with the system of the organization. Based on the views of the informants, I propose the argument that a positive organizational culture speeds up the development process of the new employees by encouraging learning and motivation factors for them through building a multicultural and multidimensional environment. owever, it can use improvement by developing and shaping up the career path though maintaining transparency in the business practices and operating in the modern business environment. In the global dynamic business environment, it is important and critical to maintain diversity and flexibility in the cultural domain of an organization. Maximizing employee’s values are considered as rational assets that require a culture to support their logical participation, both for individuals and organizational learning (Kilduff and David 545). It is important to note that within a company, culture is not uniform. Various subcultures will exist in departments or teams, some even contradicting the overall organizational culture. By analyzing culture and sub-culture throughout an organization, the new employees strategize their operational performance. Organizational culture is more than just an internal phenomenon. In this way, culture becomes a very important part of a company’s brand. In conclusion, organizational culture has a positive impact in preparing new employees. Every employee in the organization has their own different values and beliefs that can be investigated to impact miscellany of organizational process. The informants were also in support of fostering a vibrant work culture to yield a positive work environment where employees are keener to take on additional responsibilities and more equipped to meet new challenges arising out of their work. In addition, efficient work culture promotes organizational diversity(Kilduff and David 46). In conclusion, culture exists in all companies, whether it is actively maintained or left to chance. It can be a liability or an asset, and it is often the difference between short term gains and long-term success. G. Two Federal or State laws relevant to the issue Two federal or state laws that are relevant to the issue of organizational culture and the preparation of new employees are the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act of 2008 and the Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA) of 2013. The genetic information non-discrimination Act was established in 2008 to prevent any kind of discrimination or bias faced by the employees on the basis of their genetic composition. This means that there should be no discrimination in the recruitment or development of the employees on the basis of the genetic factors and genetic information related to the employee, the results of any genetic test for the employee, the genetic tests of any family member of the employee and the manifestation of any illness or chronic disease in any family member of the employee. The Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) is a federal law in the United States of America aimed at protecting the general public from the discrimination done by the employers on the basis of genetic information of the employees. This act is devised to protect the employees from genetic discrimination done on the aspects of employment and health insurance in the country. Genetic discrimination is a biased process in which the employers and the insurance companies treat their employees or insurance claimants differently on the basis of genetic changes that may create or increase the risks of a chronic illness or genetic disorder. GINA is a state law implemented by the US government to shield the people of the United States from such forms of discrimination. The Act has two parts. The second part of the Act aims at prohibiting discrimination on the basis of genetic information in the employment of the people in decisions like recruitment and promotion. The Employment Non Discrimination Act of 2013 is devised to protect the employees in US against any sort of discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation or ethnic background of the individual. This Act prohibits the organizations in the United States from firing, demoting or displaying any other form of biasedness towards the employees (Kilduff and David 112). This Act is implemented with the aim to improve the organizational culture and motivate all levels of people to find employment for them in the country. The Act also ensures that all the employees in the country stand in the same position when seen from the eyes of law. Discrimination in workplaces based on gender identity and sexual orientation are abolished under this law. This Act is aimed at establishing open and diversified work culture in the organization conducting their business in the United States and at evolving the cultural practices with the emerging global trends. h. Recommendations to organizations facing this issue Building a suitable organizational culture is specifically important in the evolving global trends of human resource practices. The preparation of new employees to adjust themselves to the organizational is a critical activity taken up by the human resource practitioners in all types of organization, irrespective of their scale of operation or the industry to which it belongs. The alignment of the organizational culture with the personal values and beliefs is an important step necessary to manage and maximize talent within the multinational and multicultural organizations. The organizations should focus on building a value driven organizational culture on which the importance of contributing to the society, the stakeholders and the development and well-being of the employees is sufficiently considered. The organization should take a step by step approach to establish a supporting work culture. This should start from the pre joining phase of the new employees and continue till almost one year. This whole phase should involve the identification of the job expectations, building work relationships, finding a place for the employees in the organization and developing the skills of the employees. Creating opportunities in the organization would be a way to establish a successful and sustainable organizational culture. A culture that involves appraisals for performances, sufficient rewards and recognition, motivation, non-discrimination, flexibility and open mindedness is guaranteed to ensure sustainability and competiveness of the organization in the changing business world. This is done through the engagement of the new employees in the activities of the organization quickly and developing a faster learning curve for the new employees. The organizational culture should encompass developing suitable opportunities, aligning the personal valued with the organizational goals, boosting performance of the employees, supporting the employees to actively participate in the organization and setting proper directions for the employees. A culture of commitment and openness can be built by abolishing any discriminatory policies in recruitment and promotion processes and by ensuring an equal and fair treatment for all the employees of the organization. Abiding by the state laws related to organizational culture, workforce diversity, non-discrimination and labor rules would ensure that an impressive and compliant work culture is developed within an organization. A suitable organizational culture for the new employees would be on in which their concerns are appropriately addressed , their queries are promptly solved and in which they are continuously supported and guided by the managers or supervisors as well as the human resource personnel in understanding their job role and the expectations form their day to day activities. Also, the guidance of the managers in planning the career growth of the employees, communicating clearly with them about the organizational goals, objectives, culture and code of conducts is of critical importance to support the new employees for the day of their joining in the organization. Employee engagement is seen as an effective process in meeting the emerging issue of preparing the new employees within an organization. Employee engagement is a continuous process aimed at supporting and motivating the new employees to grow fast in the learning curve and become more interested to participate in the organizational activities. A major key to employee engagement is motivation and identification of the values of an individual employee. Informal human resource practices that can help in raising the level of employee engagement are mostly derived from the exiting cultural aspects of the organization. These practices ensures sustainability initiatives on the part of the employees and may include learning, challenging, supporting, recognizing, rewarding, leveraging and tapping in quick wins with respect to the involvement and performance of the new employees. Conducting training programs and workshops to assimilate the organizational culture with the preparation of the new employees are other significant human resource practices that can be implemented to meet the emerging challenge of preparing new employees in the organization. Works cited Kilduff, Martin and David, Krackhardt. Interpersonal Networks in Organizations: ` Cognition, Personality, Dynamics, and Culture. USA: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ` Print. Schein, Edgar. Organizational Culture and Leadership. USA: Jossey-Bass; 3 edition. 1985, ` print. Sims, Ronald. Managing Organizational Behavior. USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. ` Print Read More