Onboarding Handbook: An Indispensable Tool for Onboarding Processes

Abstract

Onboarding handbooks constitute a very important and powerful tool in the socialization and integration processes of recruits implemented by Human Resources. As companies compete to thrive in global markets, the attraction and retention of employees have been given much attention in recent years. One of the strategies developed by companies to achieve this goal are the so-called Onboarding Handbooks given to newcomers, serving as a means of facilitating workers’ integration into the everyday processes of the company. As a consolidated research area, many HR studies have been developed around these subjects, as these manuals have been proven to be important tools in the socialization process of the former candidate, now entering the organisational culture of a given enterprise. A literature review was developed according to the main variables of the study of Organisational Socialization processes, strategies, and methods, with special emphasis on the onboarding book. To find out if these manuals correspond to the relevant literature of HR, eight of the onboarding handbooks from several public and private organizations have been analysed following the proposed structure of onboarding handbooks presented in the literature review. In addition, purposeful sampling was followed and content analysis on the handbooks was developed. The paper’s contributions are twofold: (a) the authors suggest a complete and up-to-date structure for the contents of onboarding books to be applied by HR managers and (b) compare its structure to several manuals of different enterprises from various sectors of the Portuguese economy. Findings show that the onboarding book remains an important tool and facilitator of organisational integration. Although, the onboarding processes are changing, and even the format of the onboarding books can become different (digital or not), their contents are essential for the socialization of newcomers and a means to organisational culture dissemination as well as containing functional contents such as internal norms and regulations.

Fostering Competency Development Through Knowledge Sharing Capabilities in Onboarding

“…Whether onboarding activities are focused on the provision of basic information about company rules and regulations, or on the transfer of functional domain specific knowledge, they always depend on the firm's existing knowledge sharing capabilities. Indeed, newly hired employees gain access to organizational knowledge using various sources that include "non-interpersonal" ones, such as onboarding handbooks and digital knowledge repositories, and "interpersonal" ones, such as those related to the knowledge they gain from interacting with managers and coworkers (Cesário & Chambel, 2019;Godinho et al, 2023;Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992). Furthermore, accessing the job specific knowledge of employees that have previously occupied similar or the same position (i.e., predecessor's knowledge), has been shown to be an important means to help new hires gain the competencies required to fulfill their role and responsibilities more rapidly (Elias &Farah, 2020).…”