Zawadi serves as the head of department for a customer support unit in a busy and large Mombasa logistics company. When she hires new staff, she focuses on one-way support for them but with no formal orientation or structured memtorship process.
Even though her team rushes to help the newcomers on the first day and show them every system, jump in to fix their mistakes, and even handle the difficult client calls on their behalf, after about three months the mood reverses.
Everyone gets bored with handholding the newcomers and instead starts to quietly pull back. The new staff, who never really got a chance to stand on their own two feet, receive a formal process of orientation, resulted in them stopping to ask questions or offering support to even newer employees as they came in.
Some of those staff retreat into their screens and just keep quietly to themselves while others try to prove their worth to the team by saying yes to every request and, in turn, burn out and start looking at online job ads over each lunch hour.
Zawadi notices her staff working late but still taking long to fit in with the office vibe and existing staff. She cannot quite understand why performance and retention do not improve and then remain stable.
Researchers Liangting Zhang, Peter Bamberger, Man-Nok Wong, and Ningyu Tang last week published a study where they followed a large group of employees throughout their first year in new job roles ...