After getting selected for a job, the selected employee faces challenges to adapt and adjust to the organization. The employee has anxiousness, anxiety, stress, nervousness and fear while joining the new job. To tackle such a situation of the new employee, the role of socialization is important. Socialization is the process of making the new employee feel good and easy among new people, location and work culture of the organization. It creating ease and comfort for the employee to adjust and adapt to the new working culture of the organization.

Socialization is the process of learning and adapting to new rules, regulations and work culture of the newly joined organization. Through socialization, an employee feels comfortable and satisfied with the organization. Such satisfaction increases dedication to the job and results in higher organizational commitment. Such higher commitment reduces the turnover and absenteeism tendency of the employee. In short, socialization is the process of making employees adapt, adjust and be habitual to the rules, regulations, team environment and culture of an organization. Such socialization can be initiated with the help of newsletters, manuals, handbooks, orientation and training and the citation of role models.

The Socialization Purpose

Socialization is the process by which employees are familiarized with organizational culture, values, norms and rules. It is making employees feel good and comfortable in the organizational environment. The purpose of socialization has been discussed below:

1. To ensure predictability of employee behavior: During socialization, a manager can interact and learn the behavior of newly appointed employees. This helps in knowing his/her attitude and work preference. This helps in predicting the potential way of his/her work style, situation handling and performance. It also helps in predicting the acceptable and unacceptable levels of behavior of employees at work.
2. To substitute for rules guiding employee behavior: A new employee adapts and adjusts to the organizational culture after socialization. In this way, socialization can be regarded as a substitution for rules guiding employee behavior. However, the whole socialization process and employee behavior must be in accordance with the culture, norms, values, practices and rules of the organization.
3. To reduce anxiety: A new employee joining an organization has stress, anxiety and fear while joining on the first day. This is due to an unknown new work environment, organizational culture, people and surroundings. Thus, socialization aims for reducing such anxieties of employees ensuring easy acclimatization in the organization’s culture and with its people.
4. To increase employee performance and satisfaction: New employees value socialization very highly. It ensures the compatibility and comfort of these employees with the organization’s culture and people. It makes them positive and stress-free. This leads to their satisfaction and handles their duties and responsibilities better. This increases their performance too.
5. To strengthen corporate culture: Socialization is very important for a newly joining employee in an organization. It facilitates easy adaptation and adjustment of an employee in multiple aspects of the organization. It has a high value in eyes of new employees. It creates satisfaction and results in better performance from such employees. Thus, a good socialization process aims to enrich and strengthen the corporate culture of the organization.

The Process of Socialization

Socialization is the process of familiarizing a new employee with the organization’s culture, values and people. It influences the satisfaction and performance of employees. That’s why it should be conducted systematically. Socialization can is addressed through three stages. These are discussed below:

1. Pre-Arrival Stage (Entry): This refers to socialization before actually entering the organization. Every employee joins an organization with a certain level of information fostering their perception and belief about the organization, its working environment, corporate culture and people. This is done during academic study and through pre-job orientation programs.
2. Encounter Stage: Every employee joining an organization does have expectations. But when they face the organization, the reality could be different than the expectation. Such difference, in reality, causes reality shocks to employees. The intensity of reality shock is high when such difference of expectation and reality is high. Socialization minimizes such a difference gap between organizational reality and employee expectation. It makes them capable enough to cope with such reality shocks while encountering the organization and its people.
3. Metamorphosis: This is the stage in which new employees discover ways of dealing with problems tacked during the encounter stage. They manage the issues confronted during the encounter stage with the help of their knowledge, skills, abilities, behavior and mentality. In this stage, these employees adapt and adjust to an organization. They are accepted and recognized by their peers. This is the stage where socialization starts and the career of the employee begins in the organization.

Considerations for Drafting Socialization Programme

 Socialization is concerned with a new employee, his/her expectation, satisfaction and performance, Hence, it is a special and crucial process in an organization. Due to this, various considerations are to be taken into account while developing a socialization program in an organization. Some of such key considerations are mentioned below:

1. Formality or Informality: Socialization can be undertaken in both formal or informal ways. An organization can run training programs or workshops so as to let new employees know about the culture, values, rules and practices of the organization. On the other hand, the employee can choose a person or the organization assigns someone to socialize with a new employee. Formal socialization is more stressful as compared to informal socialization.
2. Determined or Undetermined: A step-by-step socialization program can be developed by an organization. This is the determined approach of socialization. On the other hand, promotion is the undetermined way of socialization.
3. Individually Tailored or Collectively Administered: If the organization wants the individual perspective of an employee for his/her performance, individually tailored socialization programs are developed. On the other hand, to address collective or group performance, collectively administered socialization programs are developed. Generally, new employees are socialized in a group for their easy, prompt and effective socialization.
4. Sequential or Non-Sequential: A socialization program conducted under set design, structure and order is called a sequential socialization program. It is suitable at the time of assigning new roles and responsibilities for future managers. On the other hand, socialization in no set form and order is called a non-sequential socialization program. It is more suitable for newly recruited employees.
5. Homogeneous or Heterogeneous: Socialization program initiated has single or common perspective. If the recruiting group of new employees has homogeneous nature, the socialization program is set from a single perspective. In the case of the heterogeneous nature of the group, a common perspective is used to set such programs.
6. Serial or Disjunctive: The development of socialization programs depends upon the availability of tutors who can guide new employees. A serial socialization program can be set if the newly recruited employee has to follow her/his predecessor. In case if such newly recruited employees have to follow a different route instead of following /his predecessor, a different disjunctive socialization program has to be set by the organization.
7. Investiture or Divestiture: The development of a socialization program depends on the current identity of newly recruited employees. Some organizations want to destroy their current identity and make them identifiable as per the need and policy of the organization. But other types of an organization want to integrate their identity with new responsibility for their better performance.