The New Employee

I moved out of my home at the age of 15, four years in military academies and then became a soldier cum young army officer. Served and worked in multifaceted administrative and management roles/assignments in 11 different regions of Pakistan learning the art of adjustments, diversity and flexibility.

Every year it was a new start but every new change was more thrilling and enterprising. Time to prove my mettle was always less. Challenges were always new. Adjusting in a new environment and in a new team was not a piece of cake. what i learnt from those thirteen years was the fact that every team and organization has a different culture and cannot be compared with our previous organization or team specially when expecting. It was never the organization that mattered but my own attitude. My Teachers during my school life had taught me to be humble, perseverant, different, competitive, consistent and alert. Those were six inclinations that helped me to deal with every new challenge, team and organization.

Next half decade i worked with three different academic organizations as a teacher and as an administrator. Each organization was better then the other in some aspect and a recognized brand in itself. Being a new employee i faced a different work conditions and environment. But sailed through the winds of odd and even in flying colors. The same six principles helped me.

During last fifteen years I worked for steel and then power plants, largely as HSEQ Lead. There were three different assignments each one with a different team or business unit. so i was a new employee thrice. I have always tried to work harder every new day though lot of my peers tell me that one must relax when you have established yourself in a new organization.

Truly speaking, we are not being paid by our organizations to relax. Instead we always have back locks and a lot more work to do. it means we are expected to do more. we have also witnessed that those who work get more work and those who are slow in responses get lesser work. many of them survive for some years in an organization depending upon how efficient their management and HR watch is. But still few are hunted much earlier.

We observe diverse behaviors of new employees in organizations depending largely on their previous experiences and exposures. some act like goofs and are actually very intelligent and may be taking time to understand the environment.

Yet many act like Tom Cruise, Legends, Tycoons, Champions, Chief Engineers and or CEOs right from the oust. They consider power of influence through lobbying as more important. Though lobbying even if it is open or covert is a negative term . It can destroy organizations. The worst part is that not new employees but many old or senior employees are actually administrators of these lobbies. A new employee must understand that he needs to understand more in first few weeks. where an organization is quite big it may take months for an individual to settle down. I have heard some very seasoned professionals saying, "I take every day as my first day in an organization". Optically it may sound intelligent to be so much careful and conscious but this can actually reduce our creativity, initiatives and beyond the box thinking. lobbying and seeking consensus on professional matters are two different things. Power of Influence is very important but should never be achieved through back biting, covert lobbying, corner meetings, reference games, undue services, compassionate refuges, opportunist jump ins etcetera.

As a new employee you don't have to tell others what all you did in the past. you have to do things to let people understand how good you may be at certain things. your success as new employee would depend not on what you have been doing but what all you can do or actually do. Yet another bad taboo, is that people around new employees start investigating about how someone has been hired. It only happens when an organization is operating on references and not on merit. And even if the organization has some merit system, imagine what the new employee would learn from such interrogations. some new employees declare about their connections with some senior executives to win an influence. It further generates antagonism against them.

New Employees often concentrate more on their rights and do not try to understand their duties. At times they conduct much rudely then many of the senior and old employees. Some HR teams show castles to candidates during the process of hiring. so much so, some new employees feel that the organization is on hold and waiting for their induction to grow. They expect a company car with a suited chauffer to pick them up from their homes. A brand new lap top, unlimited data and an air conditioned office because they had topped their university in the engineering or an MBA program. you may have done remarkable well in your graduate school, university and or in your previous job. But a new employee is a new employee. One has to prove his mettle to get a medal or he would continue meddling in the mud. Rights are never demanded in organizations and companies, they have to be earned. so is the respect.

A new employee who is focused on his job description, duties or work details is respected more. Good HR teams provide Job Descriptions to all their new employees. It should be tentative and their should always be a room of initiative and improvement for the new employees. However, even if a job description is not provided to a new employee, i strongly believe every good professional should have strong acumen to create one. In my personal opinion Job Description is the first step any one in a new organization, department or a role a professional must get to. It should be well documented, discussed with his line manager and also Human Resource Department. Job descriptions should be as pragmatic as possible and googling should be discouraged. Every thing expressed in job description should be achievable and in align with the principles of SMART. A good job description of new employees help to achieve departmental and organizational objectives as well. Without a clear job description a new employee is like an Unarmed Soldier in the battlefield. An individual job description should never be minced with functional or departmental job descriptions. It can be very harmful to new employees. For Instance few days or weeks old employee cannot do what is to be done by a team or departmental head.

An individual job description and employee handbook are two different documents and should not be mixed with each other. The best job descriptions are those created by the employees themselves. Even if a new employee is senior in age or experience and has joined an organization in managerial position or even as much senior executive, he should still not jump rather bump into decisions. He or She also needs to understand the organizational environment and his departmental behavior.

It has almost become customary to keep all new employees on a probationary period from quarter of a year to one year. Some employees hide themselves in a manner that their weaknesses and negativities remain hidden from their line managers during this time. Good HR Teams plan structured