How to manage new employees’ expectations

As a new employee, finding out the new organisation does not meet your perceived expectations would cause you to suffer emotions ranging from betrayal to distrust to dissatisfaction. FOTOSEARCH

By Scott Bellows

IN SUMMARY
Achieve the realistic job portrayal through a technique called: organisational socialisation. Organisational socialisation entails the process by which individuals learn the values, expected behaviours, and social knowledge necessary to assume their roles in the organisation.

Odhiambo peers out the window of his Westlands office. As the director of product development for a food processing firm, he reflects on the landmark of reaching his first three months on the job.

Prior to his migration to the new company, Odhiambo spent the last six years with the same entity in the same industry as his current employer.

He always enjoyed his prior job through feelings of stability, upward mobility, and trust in his former employer.

Changing organisations took a mental toll on Odhiambo as he rebuilds his new life at the new firm. He originally understood that the new job would include substantially greater job responsibilities and more authority, something he craved but never achieved previously.

However, despite the emotions of fear and excitement that accompanies a new position, Odhiambo now contemplates whether he made a mistake in switching to the new corporation.

While the title “director of product development” seems grand and powerful, the bureaucracy surrounding the approval process for each new product requires multiple signoffs throughout the company beyond the control of Odhiambo himself.

He thinks that his new boss led him to believe that the job held more power, autonomy, and creative and process control than it really did.

How would you feel if you were Odhiambo and you changed jobs due to a slightly inaccurate understanding of the full realities of a new position?

Most likely, you would suffer emotions ranging from betrayal to distrust to dissatisfaction. Such individually held feelings bring dangerous consequences to the whole company including lower job performance resulting in lower profitability.

So as the CEO where Odhiambo works, how do you prevent the negative side effects from employee dissatisfaction and new hire regret?

First, a boss must understand that beliefs exist around the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between the company and the new employee.

Second, the boss must realise that the agreement exists as inherently perceptual in that both parties may have different interpretations of the psychological contract beyond the written job contract.

Inasmuch, Odhiambo’s manager likely felt pressure to hire for the position. He therefore pushed himself to present a positive image about the company, the job, and the processes to Odhiambo.

How many of us managers know we have done this at some time in our careers? If so, as the manager, is your goal to win in the short-term by securing a superbly qualified employee or do you desire to hire the rightly matched employee for the job over the mid to long-term?

In the event that you decided the latter option as your goal, then you must learn that psychologists frequently state that the key to happiness revolves around one’s ability to hold realistic expectations about one’s own life