Effective organizations support their employees while challenging them to grow with the firm. This is done through a structured process that every organization has established in line with its policies. All the activities geared towards supporting an employee are integrated into the socialization strategy. In other words, it is a collective term for the procedures of recruitment and making a new employee adapt to the working environment within the same institution. Being a dynamic exercise characterized by mutual influence, the new staff learns and adjusts to the new role while also being able to personalize it. Socialization happens continuously, but it is of great significance to make a responsive effort from the beginning to achieve the best results.
Organizational socialization is important not only to the employee but the employer. For instance, the new employees get assimilated into the culture of the organization in which they are working. It is therefore important for the employee to modify their work procedures to attain their personal needs and the employer’s expectations. This is done through the constant seeking of information about the organization and adapting their conduct towards the behavior of their colleagues. Several members of every organization are indeed responsible for determining socialization and are crucial for it to be successful. Examples of the members range from managers, human resource officers, and peers to the new employee. Moreover, both the supervisors and the mentors can be of great help in the process. Therefore, organizational socialization relies on the company culture, strategic goals, and talent strategy, which are entangled with each other through the learning and development within the setup of an institution.
Case Examples of Organizational Culture, Strategic Goals, and Talent Strategy
Fundamental to the performance of any business enterprise is the organizational culture, strategic goals, and talent strategy within which the institution operates. Berkshire Hathaway and General Electric Company (GE) have similar organizational cultures and goals, thereby making them effective. Berkshire Hathaway has an extremely decentralized organizational structure that permits considerable autonomy to managers who are serving under its CEO, Warren Buffet (Salzar, 2019). With GE, its organizational culture is focused on customer-centric simplification. For clarity, the buyer-focus cultural approach is based on the dynamic consumer needs related to disruptive technologies. Berkshire Hathaway operates on a strategic plan of a long-term investment horizon hence ameliorating performance (Salzar, 2019). On the other hand, GE’s primary strategic intervention for competitive advantage is the differentiation of its products to attract its clients to exceptional commodities. On the talent strategy, Berkshire Hathaway enables its employees in management positions to perform optimally by allowing them great freedom to make their decisions without the CEO’s interference (Salzar, 2019). GE hires the right people to drive its effort based on technological leadership, services acceleration, and resources apportioning. Although the existent differences in corporate strategies and cultures of both the two aforementioned companies, their goals are similar.
Organizations’ Uniqueness, Hiring and Retaining Talent for Sustainable Organizational Performance
For my future organization, the company culture is what will endear me to the institution. The employer should have values that harmonize diverse employees’ beliefs into a shared organizational vision and mission. Several variables need to be evaluated in ascertaining an institution’s level of distinction (Kodden, 2020). These parameters are what differentiate one firm from another concerning relevance in the marketplace for talents. Aspects of an organizational culture making my future organization be the best among other employers include flexible working hours, management structure, and workplace rules and procedures. The company should have flexible working time differentiated into work shifts. The shifts should be chosen depending on an employee’s needs. Additionally, the management structure of the firm must ensure employee satisfaction (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). The decentralized management structure will then make employees feel incorporated in the organization’s decision-making. Workplace rules and procedures should be elaborate in addition to being simple (Kodden, 2020). As a result of the organization’s positive culture, the employees will be more engaged, satisfied, and productive, and in turn, this will impact positively on the productivity of the firm.
Aside from what makes an organization to be different from others, there are specific strategies that a company needs to implement to ensure they hire and retain excellent skills to sustain organizational performance. Firstly, implementing employee engagement activities such as team building, sporting events, refresher workshops, and seminars should be one of the strategies to enable high retention of employees (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). High employee engagement results in greater staff attendance and a lower turnover of staff. Secondly, an employer should design sound policies that are geared toward supporting employees’ professional growth and development (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). It means that training and development (T&D) should be prioritized. Loans at low interests should be availed to the employees who need to further their educational skills by enrolling in academic programs. Thirdly, an organization should provide competitive compensation for the work done (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). In this case, fair remuneration should be determined based on the rate of inflation and specific job roles. In simple terms, the salary that is paid to employees should allow them to live comfortably, based on the cost of living in that locality (Kodden, 2020). Without a doubt, all these interventions help prevent or reduce employee dissatisfaction.
Employee Engagement through Learning and Development
Engaged employees are ideal for any workplace as they are fit to tackle any assignment efficiently relating to their job. One of the best ways of ensuring continuous employee engagement is through the implementation of learning and development programs in workplaces (Kodden, 2020). This process should be ongoing because it helps in aligning the employees’ goals and performance with those of the organization. The people practice department should design online courses that can be easily accessed by all employers when they are away from the workplace (Kodden, 2020). As part of the mode of learning and development, interactive group training should be included in the company’s training model. This is important in enabling first-hand information to reach many workers at the same time and eradicate any misinformation that may arise (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). Undeniably, training and development is an endless process, and as such, a budget should be maintained with a vote head that is specifically assigned to its name. The money should then be used to facilitate employee training (Kodden, 2020). Nevertheless, overspending on learning and development should be moderated as it can hurt the overall return on investment (ROI) for employees.
A consistent process of learning and development is sustained further by supplying the right tools for training and information acquisition. Not only is this important in the T&D areas of an organization but also in other segments. Employees should be provided with the right tools to ensure that they succeed in their roles (Kodden, 2020). Notable examples are the company’s tools and processes that employees use in addition to the organizational capabilities that workers have at their disposal. Besides the company’s infrastructure, there should be a continuous coaching program within the organization (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). For instance, employees should be placed under a mentor or a coach from whom they obtain guidance in matters that are related to their jobs. Ceaseless training should be maintained by continual reviewing of the scope of the learning materials to align the training with the business needs and also emerging issues (Kodden, 2020). Integrating all aspects of learning and development should guide the design and implementation of the socialization process, as has been elaborated.
Career Planning and Development
In the organizational socialization process, career planning and development is a salient aspect. As an individual takes a keen interest in professional development, career planning allows an individual to become aware of self, available career opportunities, and existing constraints with different options and sequences. Through career planning, an individual identifies associated professional objectives and undertakes work education and correlated developmental actions to attain a particular professional goal. Career planning should therefore help individual employees to plan for their careers in terms of their capacities and skills within the context of organizational needs (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). However, career planning is a process that does not work in isolation but is conjoined with career development as well. It means that for the continuous career development to be sustained by individual employees, they must ensure that they have an elaborate career plan (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). Therefore career development from an individual perspective comprises those personal improvements that one pursues to accomplish a career plan. Personal career development should be constituted of the activities that employees undertake independent of their organization (Kodden, 2020). In essence, career planning and development enables an individual to identify personal career goals and determine what they need to attain those goals.
Moreover, organizations should align their employees’ needs with organizational goals to ensure they leverage human resources as an important tool to ensure sustainable growth. This is why organizational career planning and development is important to an institution as an employer (Kodden, 2020). Essentially, career planning helps an organization design learning and development strategies for its employees in terms of organizational needs. It is concerned with formulating an institutionalized system of career movement and growth (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). As such, an organizational career plan establishes an extensive structure for progressive and consistent career growth of employees from the point of onboarding to retirement. With a set plan, a firm undertakes organizational improvements in terms of learning and development or even internal restructures to ensure the progression of its employees’ careers (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). Actions for career development should be instigated by the people practice department, or the organization can support individual initiatives by its employees about professional growth. From an organizational viewpoint, career development involves the trailing of professional paths. Ultimately, organizational career planning and development should be more concerned with assessing individual employees’ capability to fulfill the needs of an employer.
Learning Methodologies in the Development Process
Every adult learner has a strategy that they employ to remember information that they have studied during learning. One of the proposed methodologies in adult learning is the visual learning style. In this type of information acquisition, the adults take in information visually through maps, graphs, diagrams, and charts. Visual learning methodology should also be comprised of the use of presentations, videos, and photos to relay complex information more understandably. Indeed, this learning methodology is important to learners as they can show the relationship between ideas in a way they can visualize (Kodden, 2020). Besides visual techniques, adult learners should as well employ brainstorming as a learning technique. In the mentioned strategy of brainstorming, a trainer mentions a central idea to a learner and invites the learners to express their ideas freely and spontaneously (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). More explicitly, brainstorming is a highly participatory methodology that should promote the involvement of adult learners in a learning exercise. Applying this technique, the trainer should ask the learners to suggest personally as many concepts as they can to specific questions (Kodden, 2020). Accordingly, visual learning and brainstorming can be employed to enhance the understanding and participation of adult learners.
Other adult learning methodologies will include but are not limited to the action learning approach and self-directed learning techniques. In self-directed learning, the learner should take the initiative to understand what they need to learn (Kodden, 2020). They will then set their learning goals, locate the resources of importance, create and follow a learning schedule, and assess their results. Strikingly, in this mode of learning, the learners should seek those who can help them, including trainers, coaches, and peers. Nonetheless, this learning should be adopted by those learners who are self-motivated and do not require some kind of pressure to initiate a working plan for themselves (Kodden, 2020). Of all the learning methodologies, a strategy that is mostly applicable in career development and socialization is action learning. The use of this method is inevitable as every learning approach will employ some of its aspects. More specifically, every learning design must be embedded in the approach of action learning as it involves taking actions and reflecting on the results (Kodden, 2020). In the context of a workplace, this learning model improves problem-solving by formulating questions and identifying possible solutions to the challenges.
Training Issues and their Management
Being at the center of organizational socialization, training is characterized by some issues which must be well managed for its overall effectiveness. In fact, the issues can influence external or internal training with respect to the work environment. One such issue is the generational gap that exists in the workplace. Unavoidably, different generations exist in the same institution as employees (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). For instance, when millennials and the older generations are employed in an institution, challenges may occur with regard to training that involves online resources and modern technology. Millennials, as opposed to older generations, respond very well to learning techniques that deploy things such as microlearning and augmented reality. Secondly, an issue such as cultural differences between employees can hinder effective external training and development (Kodden, 2020). The problem is more pronounced when the employer is a large multinational corporation with a considerable breadth of diversity. A problem arises when one-on-one training is to be administered to employees in different geographical areas with varying language dialects. Generational gaps and language differences are aspects that require harmonization before an elaborate training schedule is fixated by any employer.
Issues that impact internal training and development are standardization of training and engaging the employees with training. It is at times difficult to produce the same learning outcomes from the same learning resources, especially in large corporate environments (Kodden, 2020). In some situations, it is difficult to ensure that teaching modes are invariably consistent (Kodden, 2020). Moreover, a great challenge arises from the side of employers if they want to determine the level of engagement of the employee with the training process. This can be attributed to the fact that the trainees either cannot understand the objectives or see the relevance of the training to them. From time to time, it can be that the mode of learning delivery appears nonconventional and uninteresting. It is therefore important for a company to continuously review its learning modes and criteria.
There are some interventions that should be undertaken to ensure that the issues pertaining to internal or external training are adequately managed. More specifically, to address the generational gap between the millennials and the older generation, the former should be deployed as learning assets because of their ability to communicate what they have learned with passion and clarity. Furthermore, before external training is executed, special consideration should be taken to develop resources that are multicultural and multilingual (Kodden, 2020). On issues of employees’ engagement with training, a company should create a dynamic training portfolio that employs a variety of methodologies to deliver on its learning goals (Berkelaa & Harrison, 2019). Lastly, for purposes of training, employers need to develop an unambiguous syllabus to provide uniformity in situations where either internal or external training modes are applied. Therefore, the outlined measures must provide highly defined learning outcomes devoid of vagueness.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This recommendation draws its strength from its structure which explicitly explains the perfect design of a socialization process in its entirety. In this case, the report follows a conventional scheme where all the parts of the design project are explained with the use of detailed examples. Clearly, the objectives of the report are carefully elucidated as each structural part implements this specific goal. As well, the recommendation has directly stated its target group, which is formal organizations. The paper has been formulated with a distinct understanding of its audience. Based on structural elements and the stated target, one can easily design a socialization process that is grounded on the explained issues.
A critical analysis of the recommendation, however, points to some weaknesses of the report. Notwithstanding that several structural parts are well explained, the information of interest is hidden to the extent that one has to properly read the report to acknowledge several recommendations raised. This is partly due to the deductive approach that has been employed in the writing of the report. Despite the weakness elaborated, the recommendation captures most of the elements of a perfect organization that can be used in the design of a socialization process for employees to maximize human talent.
Conclusion
The organizational socialization process is greatly dependent on company culture and strategic goals, which are intertwined with each other through the learning and development within the organization setup. Borrowing from large multinational corporations such as GE and Berkshire Hathaway, developing enterprises should emulate their examples by aligning their strategic goals with hiring and talent strategies. By delineating diverse employee goals to match those of the organization, the institution streamlines a worker’s capabilities towards achieving organizational goals. Implementation of employee engagement activities helps in reducing turnover rates for employees and is an example of a corporate strategy to derive a competitive advantage. By and large, engaged employees are able to tackle job challenges in an efficient way. Therefore T&D is an employee engagement strategy that every employer should invest in to ensure that the organizational socialization process is successful and sustainable to ensure the maximization of human capital.
References
Berkelaa, B., & Harrison, M. (2019). Organizational socialization. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Web.
Kodden, B. (2020). The art of sustainable performance: A model for recruiting, selection, and professional development. Springer Publishers. Web.
Salzar, J. (2019). Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Strategic Audit. Web.