All You Need is Love and to Know Where to Park: The Three Questions You Must Answer for New Employees

I just recently began work at a new organization. While exciting and personally fulfilling, the transition has required me to move my young family to a new and unfamiliar part of the country (with a stint in temporary housing), manage the sale of our old home and the purchase of a new home (in a community with a hot housing market), and navigate getting my crew settled into new schools, new church, and new community. A quick review of the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory lists quite a few of these events as contributors to life stress. Unmentioned, but certainly due for addition on any future Stress Inventory revisions, is dealing with the cable companies and moving companies. While I can’t prove that individuals who work in these industries enjoy human suffering, I’m starting to gather a concerning amount of evidence to support the theory.

Beginning something new, for most of us, brings some level of anxiety. There’s a good reason for this: certainty and predictability are core human needs. I had a professor in graduate school once describe the brain as a reverse-entropy machine – its goal is to make sense of all of the craziness we encounter. We do that through mental models that we construct based on our own experiences, as well as socially construct our certainties based upon our interaction with our social groups. We do this because, simply put, we hate not being sure or certain. (There’s great literature out there, by the way, that describes just how bad we are at sense-making. Two of my favorites are Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and Bozo Sapiens by Michael and Ellen Kaplan. And, Daniel Crosby is doing amazing work on applying these ideas to help us make better financial decisions. But, I digress.)

And, so, throwing an individual into a new environment is an inherently stressful event. All of those mental models, all of the socially-constructed certainties, are bombarded with new and conflicting data and information. Most of us have experienced the truly horrific dream of showing up to school in only your skivvies. And, while I am no Freudian, it seems fairly evident that such dreams are rooted in a fear of new and uncertain situations. (I don’t particularly buy into the interpretation of dreams in general. My 4 year-old loves Elephant and Piggie’s I Will Take a Nap! which ends – spoiler alert – with Gerald dreaming of Piggie floating in the air with the head of a turnip. I hope author Mo Willems is also not a Freudian.) It is no wonder that starting a new job can be so stressful. And, as I’ve written previously, human beings do not do their best work when their brains are in freak-out mode. Following are three questions that every new employee needs answered to be successful in a new role, and how you can answer them.

Question 1: How are Things Done around Here?

A quick look at my LinkedIn profile will show a five year tour of duty with a relatively well-known Mom n’ Pop retailer based in Bentonville, Arkansas. I truly loved my time at Walmart, and anyone with any familiarity with that organization knows that Walmart has a distinct and all-encompassing corporate culture. Elements of the culture were awesome and amazing to me – attending a Walmart Shareholder’s Meeting is part business meeting and part revival. Other elements took some getting used to – sharing a hotel room on business trips certainly caused me to reconsider my pajama choices. Where associates park (usually far away from the building and always uncovered be you in the stores, at the home office, or an executive) even reinforced the culture of the organization.

Kotter and Heskett suggest that an organization's culture, like Walmart's,, manifests in two levels. First, culture is the set of values that an organization espouses. The more visible second level are the processes and behaviors that reinforce those values. So, Walmart valued fiscal responsibility, and manifested that value through behavior (parking in Timbuktu, in the snow and rain) and policy (bunk up on the road and pray you don’t get a roomie with sleep apnea.)

While organizational culture may feel obvious to those embedded in the organization, it can be discombobulating and even jarring to an individual just beginning with your company. The first question you must answer for new employees: How Are Things Done around Here? As you answer these questions keep in mind both levels at which culture operates. Explain to new employees both how things are done (we start the work day at 7:30 am and don’t usually leave until 5:30 pm or later) and how it relates to the values of the organization (the associates in the store are working hard, so we put in longer hours here at the home office.)

Question #2: How do I Win at my Job?

Most folks do not show up for their first day of work setting their sights on mediocrity. Most have every intention of doing well in a new role, unfortunately those intentions are frequently dashed upon arrival. One of my favorite articles on the topic of engaging new employees is research done by The Aberdeen Group in their paper “Onboarding – the First Line of Engagement”. I highly recommend it if you’re looking to dive deeper into the topic of best-in-class new employee strategies. Lots of good information in there, but one piece of data I will share. Do you know what the most valuable activity an organization can undertake that predicts new employee engagement? Functional IT equipment and access to needed applications on Day 1. Try not to spit coffee on your computer monitor as you ponder that. While many of you wouldn’t know what it would be like to experience such a thing, like Olaf fantasizing about summer, you’re sure it would be lovely.

Perhaps more important for an employee’s long-term success in the new organization, however, is clear role expectations. In fact, a meta-analysis conducted by Tubre and Collins suggest that role ambiguity is a major contributor to decreased job performance. What, exactly, am I going to be held accountable for? How will you measure my success? How will I get feedback on how I’m doing, and how often? What knowledge, skills, and abilities will I need to master to thrive in this role? All of these are part and parcel of the larger question you must answer for employees: How do I Win at my Job?

Question #3: How do I Connect?

 Human beings are social creatures, for all of the good and the bad that idea entails. While you would probably get sent to HR for suggesting that the participants in the breakroom resemble chimpanzees grooming each other, you’ll now be hard pressed not to think about it next time you walk by. People thrive on connection, a fact not lost on the good folks at Gallup who identified responding “I have a Best Friend at Work” as a predictor of employee engagement.

This need for connection is particularly crucial as an individual begins work in a new organization. In fact, the research suggests that connecting with your new boss and your new team combine to predict success in a new role. Working in health care, I have heard some say (and maybe even brag) that we “eat our young.” There is a temptation to believe that a new employee will “toughen up” and “sink or swim” by being left to figure things out on their own. This could not be further from the truth – people need to fit into a social context to feel secure and do their best work.

There are a couple of ways that this can be accomplished. First, the leader should spend time identifying the key relationships that will be crucial for the success of the new employee. Are you a new nurse? Then you should be introduced to key members of your team as well as individuals with whom you’ll work regularly: lab, dietary, and environmental services. Helping the new employee navigate relationships will help seat them in the social context of your organization. Second, assist the new employee with a seasoned (and engaged) mentor. In my previous organization we established a new employee “buddy” program that is already seeing great results.

There is a common denominator in the solutions to all three of these questions, and that is the new employee’s leader. Far too often a leader will abdicate their responsibility in onboarding a new employee, believing it to be the role of HR or some other function in the organization. Nothing helps ensure the success of a new employee like a leader fully-committed to that new employee’s success. If you are a leader in your organization, commit now to answering these three questions that all new employees must have answered. As you do so you’ll find new employees that are more fully committed, who excel at their work, and who stick around to help your organization be successful.