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Perspective of
On-boarding new employees: welcoming
a three-component perspective
of welcoming
Francisco Cesário 1465
School of Business and Social Sciences, Universidade Europeia, Lisbon, Portugal
and ISPA Instituto Universitario, Lisbon, Portugal, and Received 23 August 2018
Revised 13 March 2019
Accepted 13 March 2019
Maria José Chambel
Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract
Purpose – No component of the human capital management has been more overlooked by companies than
the process of welcoming new recruited employees – the on-boarding phase. This paper aims to present a
three-component perspective of on-boarding and a contribution to measuring the employees’ perceptions
based on three dimensions of welcoming: structured corporate welcome, manager welcome and coworkers
welcome.
Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study based on a self-reported survey was conducted to
test the model and an on-boarding employees’ perceptions proposed scale. The authors hypothesized that the
three on-boarding components relate positively to some critical work outcomes (e.g. work engagement and
affective organizational commitment). Analyses using a sample of 347 workers from Portuguese firms
showed that the three-component on-boarding scale had adequate validity and all three components of on-
boarding were positively related to the work outcomes included in this study.
Findings – Findings suggest that an effective onboarding process, based on the three-component
perspective (corporate welcome, manager welcome and coworkers welcome), is a significant contribution to
promote organizational affective commitment and work engagement of new employees.
Originality/value – The paper addresses the need for organizations to design on-boarding programs
based on an integrated perspective, not only formal corporate activities but also preparing managers and
coworkers to host effectively new employees. Strong association with work outcomes enables a better
understanding on how onboard can contribute to an engaged and retained workforce.
Keywords Affective commitment, Person-organization fit, Work engagement, On-boarding
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Over the past 20 years, high-performance work systems have received considerable
attention from both academic and organizational leaders. Effectively managing human
capital has become a strategic issue, and the search for the “Holy Grail” continues.
Organizations and researchers continue to search for a significant and positive relationship
between human resources management practices, employee attitudes and company
performance (Becker and Huselid, 2006; Guest, 2011; Nishii et al., 2008; Sun et al., 2007;
Wright et al., 2001; Wright et al., 2005). However, maybe best HR practices concept is being
replaced by customized HR practices, as the research findings show that a best practice in International Journal of
Organizational Analysis
one company does not necessarily have the same impact in other companies; it seems that Vol. 27 No. 5, 2019
pp. 1465-1479
“one- size best practice does not fit all” (Lepak and Snell, 1999; Marchington and Grugulis, © Emerald Publishing Limited
1934-8835
2000). Despite this interesting debate, when business and HR leaders are asked to identify DOI 10.1108/IJOA-08-2018-1517
IJOA current and future HR priorities, the answers are invariably related to talent attraction as a
27,5 way to ensure they have the right skills and the talent the company needs; to attract and
retain the right people; and to offer aggressive performance-related rewards and competency
development programs including training, job rotation, mentoring, coaching or shadowing
practices (BCG, 2013; CIPD, 2015; Deloitte, 2015). While the emphasis is still on recruiting,
developing and retaining a talented workforce, particularly young graduates from top
1466 universities (Philips, 2009; Rigg, 2015), no component of the human capital management has
been more overlooked by companies that the process of effectively inducting new employees
into the work environment – the on-boarding phase. Implementing on-boarding practices
and activities involves more than just organizing a formal one-or two-day session in a
conference room during which someone from the HR department provides information
about the company’s structure, mission and goals, internal rules and ethics code to
newcomers (Graybill et al., 2013; Reese, 2005). The central argument in this paper is that on-
boarding practices based in organized corporate sessions are essential but insufficient to
welcome effectively new employees, and we argue that organizations policies must consider
a board range of components. Three goals drive the aim of this study. First, to test a
multidimensional conceptualization of the on-boarding experience since to date, there has
not been sufficient systematic attempts to produce such an approach. This approach was
guided by a simple theoretical framework that could be readily understood by HR
professionals and business leaders. The second objective was to test a measure to assess the
conceptualized model through an empirical study and to verify whether it had sufficient
reliability and validity to be used by organizations to obtain feedback regarding new
employees` perceptions of the importance of the on-boarding experience. Finally, to test their
ability to predict important work outcomes, we correlate each of the on-boarding
components with variables identified as potential outcomes of employee involvement with
the job (work engagement) and with the organization (affective commitment).

A three-component on-boarding perspective

A company is far more likely to retain new employees if it on-boards them appropriately
when this is achieved, adequate levels of productivity are expected in a short period and the
high costs of turnover can be reduced (Cashman and Smye, 2007). According to Klein and
Polin (2012), onboarding refers to the specific practices initiated by an organization or its
agents to facilitate employee adjustment to new roles. From the employee perspective, an
effective on-boarding process contributes to faster alignment with the company culture and
objectives; to reducing the employee’s insecurity and anxiety about not meeting the
company’s expectations for his performance; to strengthening the employee’s acclimation to
the workplace environment; and overall to acquiring desired or necessary attitudes,
behaviors, and knowledge (Bauer et al., 1998; Cable and Parsons, 2001). Some research
identifies outcome indicators for the adjustment between the person, the job and the
organization, including organizational commitment, job satisfaction, citizenship behavior
and organizational trust, among others (Allen, 2006; Cooper-Thomas and Anderson, 2002;
Judge, 1994; Lewicki et al., 1998). Based on the theory of work adjustment (Dawis and
Lofquist, 1984) and the relevant meta-analysis conducted by Kristof-Brown et al. (2005),
whose results clearly show that the adjustment model should distinguish specific types of fit
(person-organization, person-supervisor and person-group), we tested the value of using
such a multidimensional approach in the on-boarding process for newly recruited
employees. A strategic on-boarding model should be design based on three relevant
components: structured corporate welcome, management welcome and coworkers welcome.
 Some successful companies (e.g. MasterCard, EY, IBM, Google, Facebook and Apple, Perspective of
among many others) are offering excellent formal hosting and induction sessions through welcoming
structured corporate programs at different levels: the organizational or macro level, the
functional level and the on-the-job task-oriented level or micro level. The macro level
typically includes group sessions with newcomers that involve delivering information about
the company, such as its history, structure, mission, vision and core values and providing a
written copy of the ethics code, all of which are illustrated using high-quality digital
supports. It may also include specific conference room workshops during which information 1467
is shared about the benefits package, how to effectively manage the intranet system or the
employee self-service portal, or how the performance appraisal system or the cafeteria plan
works. Following this macro approach is the functional integration level; at this level,
newcomers are grouped according to the operational area for which they have been
recruited, such as finance, marketing or human resources. These sessions are conducted by
a functional manager who delivers detailed information about the newcomers’ work area.
Finally, at the micro level, employees receive specific information about their job
description, the tasks they will do, the procedures to follow, and performance objectives. HR
departments may prepare a welcome package with a CEO letter to emphasize the
importance of the new employeés job to the company mission but must always avoid “false
promises” because those can create unrealistic expectations about the employee’s future in
the company and a psychological contract breakdown may appear sooner or later.
Traditional on-boarding, with its videos, lectures, and extensive reading, can be a bit dull, so
why not convert the elements of a structured on-boarding program into a competitive game?
Gamification can make the on-boarding process less tedious (Burke, 2014). Gamification
promises to deliver more motivating, engaging, and, ultimately, effective on-boarding
processes (Depura and Garg, 2012).
However, regardless of the extent to which well-structured support is implemented,
integrating and inducting newcomers requires a second dimension: management welcome.
It is crucial that organizations have senior managers who are committed to on-boarding.
The new employee must feel genuine support from his senior manager and supervisor.
When we move to a new job, how many times in the days before starting does the following
question arise: How will I get along with my new boss? Organizations must ensure that job
roles and responsibilities are clearly communicated by managers and supervisors and
ensure that they have the time to respond to any questions or doubts raised from the new
employee. Management support is proven to have a tremendous positive impact on
employees’ wellbeing and work attitudes (Eisenberger et al., 1990; Luthans and Peterson,
2002; Saks, 2006). Managers play an important role in the on-boarding phase in not only
clarifying duties and task goals (or KPI’s if applicable) and priorities and team goals but also
helping the new employee to build a successful social network (Leader-Chivee et al., 2008;
Saks and Gruman, 2011).
Finally, but no less important, a third dimension must be considered: coworkers
welcome. Organizations should also prepare coworkers for hosting the new employeés first
day on the job. First impressions matter a great deal, and the way in which the team helps
the newcomer feel comfortable and demonstrates that he is not considered a threat makes a
difference. It is critical to ensure that a new employee is introduced to each of his coworkers
and that a friendly atmosphere is part of the company culture or DNA. Organizations that
are more successful at integrating newcomers tend to use a relational approach, which helps
new hires establish a network of relationships with coworkers (Rollag et al., 2005). Their
employee on-boarding strategy also focuses on activities that require a team effort and
coordination so that new employees do not feel isolated. Coworkers are crucial in helping
IJOA newcomers; the early development of relationships with a variety of coworkers makes
27,5 newcomers feel more connected to an organization, which in turn increases their satisfaction
and their commitment to the firm (Allen and Shanock, 2013).
This notion is not new; prior research (Adkins et al., 1996; Miller and Jablin, 1991;
Morrison and Robinson, 1997) found empirical support for the notion that coworker
interaction is very important since newcomers exhibit proactive behavior in seeking out
1468 information in the workplace, and such information is sometimes more likely to be sought
from coworkers rather than supervisors. Organizational culture plays an important role on
newcomers onboard, since it represents the way the organization is sharing among new
members its values which are the guiding principles for organizational norms and behaviors
(Van Vuuren et al., 2007; Wanberg, 2012). On-boarding programs are designed to create a
better fit within the organization by aligning company culture with those of the newly hired
employees (Cable and Parsons, 2001).

Study hypotheses
The main idea to test in our study was: if an organization onboard effectively it can
positively influence the newcomer engagement to his work and to his affective commitment
to the organization. Employees with high affective commitment are emotionally linked to
the organization, to the management and to the members of the group they belong
(Krajcsák, 2018). At this stage, we wanted to argue that one can achieve a better
understanding of an employeés adjustment within an organization when all three forms of
on-boarding are considered together. To determine whether the three components of the on-
boarding scale measured distinct constructs – structured corporate welcome, management
welcome, and coworkers welcome – and to verify its positive relationship with some work
attitude outcomes. An important work attitude resulting from onboarding is organizational
commitment which is an attachment to the organization, characterized by shared values, a
desire to remain in the organization. Newcomer socialization tactics, which first step
includes onboarding activities, are highly influential in an employeés development of
organizational commitment (Meyer and Allen, 1991). In organizations with effective
onboarding, employees may perceive higher person-organization fit and organizational
commitment than those without effective onboarding (Meyer and Bartels, 2017). Our option
to include affective commitment dimension lies in the belief that it shows the strongest
positive relationship with desirable outcomes (Eisenberger et al., 1986) such us desire to
remain in the organization. Despite the fact that literature (Meyer and Allen, 1991)
distinguishes two other forms of commitment – continuance and normative – the affective
that presupposes an emotional liaison and identification with organizational values and
goals is the most related with on-boarding newcomers (Meyer and Bartels, 2017; Saks et al.,
2007). Literature also reports some doubts about “whether continuance commitment is really
a form of commitment since there is no psychological bond involved” (Van Vuuren et al.,
2007, p. 49). The option to included work engagement as another dependent work outcome
relies on previous research findings that highlight its strong relationship with employee
performance (Bakker et al., 2004; Bakker and Demerouti, 2007), with employee retention and
with better perceived fit (Klein et al., 2015).
In this study we adopted Klein and Polin (2012) definition of onboarding as formal or
informal practices and programs engaged in by an organization to facilitate newcomer
adjustment, to create higher levels of fit within both the job and the organization, and,
consequently to reach sooner high levels of performance (Olson et al., 2005). Bauer et al.
(2007) presented a model with antecedents and outcomes of newcomer adjustment. Based on
that model we hypothesized that an employee who perceived that have on-boarding
experiences might be more likely than someone who did not have this perception to develop Perspective of
high work engagement, i.e. a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is welcoming
characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002):

H1. Corporate welcome during the on-boarding phase will positively relate to work
engagement and to affective commitment.
H2. Management welcome during the on-boarding phase will positively relate to work 1469
engagement and to affective commitment.
H3. Coworkers welcome during the on-boarding phase will positively relate to work
engagement and to affective commitment.

Method
Sample and procedures
An email containing a link to the questionnaire was sent to a list of 30 professional contacts
of the researcher working in Portuguese firms. These individuals were invited to participate
and asked to disseminate the study through their companies’ intranet with a link that
allowed workers to access the questionnaire and an invitation to participate voluntarily
(snowball technique). The email explained all the procedures and assured prospective
participants of the confidentiality and anonymity of their answers and that there were no
right or wrong answers (as was indicated on the cover page of the questionnaire, which also
described the purpose of the study and its use only for academic purposes). The data were
collected for approximately two months, between March and April 2017.
The final sample contained 347 participants (356 questionnaires were received, but 9
were eliminated because some responses were missing). Of the total sample, 187 (53.9 per
cent) were females. The age distribution was as follows: 47.5 per cent between 18 and
28 years, 33.7 per cent between 29 and 39 years, 13 per cent between 40 and 50 years, and
just 6.1 per cent over 50 years. Regarding work-related background variables, we found that
247 (71.2 per cent) had less than 5 years of organizational tenure, and 263 (75.8 per cent) were
employed in the private sector.

Measures
To develop a measure to capture employees¨ perceptions of the three components of the
on-boarding model (OB-M) they experienced, we followed the recommendations
proposed by Hinkin (1995) for scale development practices in organizational studies.
We began with item generation for each dimension – structured corporate welcome,
management welcome and coworker welcome –, and a total of 15 items were written to
capture the specific content of each dimension based on conceptual definitions (Cesário,
2015; Graybill et al., 2013; Snell, 2006); we then conducted semi-structured interviews
with five HR directors and five newly recruited employees to obtain qualitative
feedback about the clarity and readability of each item to fine-tune the items as well as
to confirm whether any important welcoming activities were missing. All the items
were presented in Portuguese. The feedback we obtained allowed us to revise some of
the items, and then managers and employees were asked to sort each randomly ordered
item into one of the three dimensions; this was done to test the content validity of the
items with respect to the dimension it was intended to reflect. Based on the item sort,
the proportion of substantive agreement was examined for each item (Anderson and
Gerbing, 1991). As all the participants classified each item into the intended
IJOA dimensions, we retained all the proposed items on the OB-M scale, with 5 items per
27,5 dimension. An issue of concern in scale construction is the number of items in a
measure; keeping a measure short is an effective means of minimizing response biases
(Hinkin, 1995). We decided to maintain all the items in this stage of the study not only
because adequate internal consistency reliabilities can be obtained with as few as three
items per measure (Cook et al., 1981) but also because, as a result of the test-study, we
1470 wanted to conduct the analysis recognizing that some items could be deleted due to
potential low factor loadings, resulting in a shortened scale. With respect to the scaling
of the items, we adopted the recommendation that the alpha coefficient reliability of a
Likert-type scale has been shown to increase with the use of up to five points for
participant responses (Lissitz and Green, 1975). Based on these concerns, we
established that a sample of 200 participants would be sufficiently acceptable for scale
development purposes by conducting confirmatory factor analysis. The resulting 15-
item scale, with a five-point response scale, was used in the following test study. As
explained in the study results section, the final version of the scale study is composed of
13 items (see Appendix), two items were removed after exploratory factor analysis due
to low factor loading (<0.60).
The dependent variables were measured using very reputable scales. Affective
commitment was measured using the Meyer et al. (1993) affective commitment scale (six
items) that was used in other Portuguese studies (Chambel and Castanheira, 2012; Chambel
and Sobral, 2011). An example item was “I feel a strong sense of belonging to my
organization”. The items were scored using a seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree,
7 = strongly agree). High scores on this scale indicate high levels of affective commitment.
The internal consistency was high (Cronbach’s a = 0.90).
We measured work engagement using a Portuguese-adapted version of the Utrecht
Work Engagement Scale (seventeen items) (Schaufeli et al., 2002) that was used in a
previous study of Portuguese workers (Chambel, 2014). Item examples were as follows:
“At work, I feel I am bursting with energy” and “I find the work that I do full of meaning
and purpose”. The participants answered the questionnaire items using a seven-value
Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always). High scores on this scale indicate high
levels of work engagement. The internal consistency was very high (Cronbach’s a =
0.97).

Statistical analysis
Structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS software package was used to test the on-
boarding measurement model through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Building on the
validation of the 15 items in the on-boarding scale, CFA of the three factors (corporate
welcome, management welcome and coworkers welcome) was conducted. To confirm the
dimensionality, we compared the proposed three-factor model with an alternative one factor
on-boarding model (i.e. with all 15 items grouped into one latent variable). The models were
compared using Chi-square tests and on other fit indices: the standardized root mean square
(SRMR), the Bentler comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), the normed fit
index (NFI), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). Levels of 0.90 or
higher for the NFI, CFI and GFI and levels of 0.06 or lower for the RMSEA indicate that the
model fits the data reasonably well (Arbuckle, 2003).
Additionally, and to test convergent and discriminant validity, differential relationships
among the work attitudes outcomes (engagement and affective commitment) and the three
types of welcome during the on-boarding phase were examined. Path analysis was
conducted to analyze the relationships between these variables.
Results Perspective of
On-boarding model validity welcoming
Before testing the structural model (Figure 1), as previously explained, we conducted
confirmatory factor analysis to test two competing models to examine whether on-boarding
support is represented by a three-factor model or a single factor model that assumes that
structured corporate welcome, management welcome and coworkers welcome load on one
general factor, representing a global on-boarding support. The one-factor model exhibited 1471
poor fit to the data, and the three-factor model obtained an adequate fitness (Table I), which
indicates an adequate confirmation of the dimensionality of on-boarding.
These analyses showed that in the sample, the factor structures of the research variables
were consistent with the conceptual model and also that the manifest variables loaded on the
latent variables, as intended. The comparison with the one-factor model confirmed that the
three components of on-boarding were constructs that had discriminant validity. The internal
consistency obtained for each factor is high (structured corporate welcome, Cronbach’s a =
0.90; management welcome, Cronbach’s a = 0.88; and coworkers welcome, Cronbach’s a =
0.91). Thus, the initial objective, which assumed that employees distinguished three types of
welcoming during the on-boarding phase, was verified.

Correlates of the three components of on-boarding

Correlations between variables are reported in Table II. All three forms of welcome during
the on-boarding phase correlated significantly and positively with work engagement and

Corporate = 0.32** R2 = 0.49

Welcome
= 0.25** Work Engagement

Management = 0.31**
Welcome Figure 1.
R2 = 0.44
= 0.31**
Affective The final model
= 0.14** Commitment
Co-workers (standardized path
Welcome = 0.16** coefficients)

Table I.
Models X2/gl NFI CFI GFI RMSEA
Onboarding
Three-factor onboarding 1.51 0.93 0.99 0.96 0.03 goodness-of-fit of the
One-factor onboarding 8.34 0.85 0.86 0.73 0.14 measurement models

Variables 1 2 3 4 5

Corporate welcome 1
Management welcome 0.78** 1
Coworkers welcome 0.64** 0.70** 1
Engagement 0.65** 0.66** 0.56** 1
Affective commitment 0.60** 0.62** 0.54** 0.75** 1 Table II.
Correlations among
Note: **p < 0.01 the variables
IJOA affective commitment. As expected, corporate welcome, management welcome and
27,5 coworkers welcome correlate positively with each other.
To justify the inclusion of the three components of on-boarding in future organizational
studies, it was necessary to demonstrate that they contribute to the prediction of work
engagement and affective commitment. We have accomplished this through multi-
regression analyses using the path analysis methodology, which aims to provide
1472 quantitative estimates of the causal connections between sets of variables (Bryman and
Cramer, 2005).
The results of the regression analyses (Figure 1) indicated that the three components of
on-boarding welcome made a significant contribution to the prediction of both work
engagement and affective commitment. Thus, the results suggest that how employees are
engaged with their work and whether they have a strong desire to remain with the firm may
be influenced jointly by perceived structured corporate welcome, management welcome, and
coworkers welcome. By analyzing, in particular, the relationship between work engagement
and the three components of on-boarding, we found that almost fifty per cent of the variation
in work engagement seems to be explained by the joint effects of on-boarding welcome
(R2 ¼ 0:49Þ. A similar effect was found in relation to affective commitment, with forty-four
per cent of its variation explained by perceptions of the three components of on-boarding
welcome (R2 ¼ 0:44Þ:

Discussion
The purpose of this study was to test a conceptual model for capturing employees’
perceptions of the way they have been welcomed and inducted into an organization and to
test a survey instrument that could assess a wide range of on-boarding issues. We believe
this goal was accomplished as considerable support was found for the construct validity of
our scale that includes three dimensions of on-boarding: corporate welcome, management
welcome and coworkers welcome. We believe that the effectiveness of organizational
practices for inducting new employees can be better understood by considering not only
formal on-boarding programs but also managers and coworkers’ attitudes towards newly
recruited employees.
We observed positive correlations between the three forms of welcoming during on-
boarding that might be explained, in part, by the fact that all three may have many common
antecedents; for example, they all may reflect a specific organizational culture or a perceived
level of organizational trust. (Webber et al., 2012; Taormina, 2009). The on-boarding phase
offers an opportunity for new employees to obtain relevant information about the
organization, its values and mission, how it works, its business challenges, what is expected
regarding employee performance and the relation between the employees’ work and the
firm’s objectives. Access to information and information sharing by managers or by
coworkers during the on-boarding phase is a mechanism that enables companies to aid
employees in achieving higher performance. Particularly, the correlation between corporate
and management welcome during on-boarding seems to be very high; this may be explained
by the fact that workers often treat the actions of their manager/supervisor as the
personification of the organization’s commitment to them (Levinson, 1965; Rousseau, 1995).
As a result, the relationship with the manager/supervisor places a great deal of emphasis on
the relationship between a worker and his/her organization. A manager may be viewed as a
representative of the organization (Herriot and Pemberton, 1997), and all the welcome given
by the manager is translated as welcoming given by the organization. In line with this
assumption, the organizational support theory (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, and
Sowa, 1986) considered that workers develop a general perception concerning the extent to
which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being Perspective of
(perceived organizational support, or POS) but also develop a perception of supervisor welcoming
support. These two perceptions are related, and meta-analyses reviews indicated that
supervisor support was an antecedent of POS (Kurtessis et al., 2017; Rhoades and
Eisenberger’s, 2002). We suggest further research be conducted to determine the
relationship between corporate and management welcome during on-boarding and the
possibility that one is an antecedent of the other. Evidence for the construct validity of our
instrument was also found by assessing the relationships between the three components – 1473
corporate welcome, manager welcome and coworkers welcome – and workers’ attitudes (i.e.
work engagement and organizational affective commitment). As expected, all three
components of on-boarding predict work engagement and affective commitment. This
positive association might be explained, in part, by the fact that when the employees
perceived that their on-boarding experience was positive, it may have impacted their
attitudes, and they may have responded with high levels of energy and dedication to their
jobs and a strong desire to stay with the firm for a long time with the intention of
establishing a long-term career. Corporate welcome and manager welcome showed a similar
strong significant association with affective commitment and work engagement, and higher
than the effect of coworkers welcome. This result is in line with previous research indicating
that onboarding practices were more likely to be experienced formally (corporate welcome)
than informally (coworkers welcome) because they may be more planned and implemented
(Klein et al., 2015; Klein and Polin, 2012).

Conclusion and implications

Results are consistent with prior findings that have suggested the positive influence of
perceived coworker involvement and supervisor support on employee job satisfaction,
work-life balance, commitment and intention to remain in the organization (Babin and Boles,
1996; Eisenberger et al.1990, 2002; Frye and Breaugh, 2004).
The development of this three-component approach to onboarding new employees has
potentially important implications for future research and for professionals. We suspect that
this issue is frequently neglected by organizations; most human resources management
practices are focused more on recruitment and selection activities and less on welcoming
new employees in an effective way. A strategic multidimensional on-boarding
implementation requires continuous monitoring, an innovative approach, and regular
feedback from new employees to ensure that they assimilate the company’s values and work
challenges and that performance objectives are being fulfilled. New employees who have
been effectively welcomed and integrated are more likely to develop work engagement and
organizational commitment. The onboarding phase should clearly be perceived as a critical
success factor for an attraction and retention strategy. Optimized onboarding presents clear
and significant benefits.to organizations, due to a wide variety of benefits, such as more
effective employee/manager communication, stronger bonds among colleagues, faster
culture assimilation, and an important contribution to employee engagement and retention.
Some limitations of this study must be acknowledged. One possible limitation is that in
our sample, almost 30 per cent of the participants had an organizational tenure of more than
five years, and they may not fully remember the way they were on-boarded when they
joined the firm; future research should control this aspect by restricting participation to
employees with fewer than five years in an organization. Another limitation of the final on-
boarding scale is that it may not be inclusive of all aspects and procedures used by
organizations in their on-boarding activities; the items were identified based both on
available firm documents and on interviews with ten human resources managers and newly
IJOA recruited employees to obtain qualitative feedback about the adequacy of the issues and to
27,5 reduce the ambiguity of some of the terms.
The measure of work engagement also raised some constraint, a very high value was
obtained to internal consistency what may suggest the existence of redundant items due to
the fact that the best fit was achieved with a single factor structure. The sampling method
used, known as “snowball”, was used basically due to the available time to collect data.
1474 However this method can produces biased samples because respondents who have a large
number of social connections are able to provide researchers with a higher proportion of
other respondents who most likely have characteristics similar to that initial respondent.
The result could be a final sample that is over-represented by the characteristics of those
respondents and under-represented by characteristics of those with fewer social connections
(Erikson, 1979).
Finally, the variables were assessed using self-reported data, which raises the question of
the results being contaminated by common method variance. Nevertheless, the research was
focused on employees’ perceptions of the on-boarding process they experienced, and self-
reported data thus seemed appropriate in this case.
In summary, we hope that this proposed conceptual model and measurement instrument
proves useful in further research on aspects of person-organization adjustment and that the
research findings help to facilitate and encourage new managerial retention strategies and
practices.

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Appendix. The three components of on-boarding welcome items

Corporate welcome
When I started to work for this firm:
 I was provided with information about its history, mission, corporate values, etc.,
thereby facilitating my integration.
 I was clearly informed about the internal rules (policies, regulations, ethic code, etc.).
 The information I received was helpful in understanding the business.
 I received adequate information to perform my duties.
Management welcome Perspective of
When I started to work for this firm: welcoming
 I did not feel comfortable with my supervisor¨s welcome (reverse).
 My supervisor provided adequate support to facilitate my integration.
 Whenever I had a problem or difficulty, my supervisor was available to help me.
 My supervisor¨s attitude helped me to reduce my initial insecurity.
1479
Coworkers welcome
When I started to work for this firm:
 My colleagues were always spontaneously available to clarify my doubts.
 My colleagues¨ attitudes helped to reduce my fears of job inadequacy.
 My colleagues always shared information I needed to adapt to my job.
 My colleagues shared pleasant moments of conviviality with me (coffee breaks, lunch
time, etc.).
 My colleagues provided adequate support to facilitate my integration.
In this study, all the items of the scale were formulated in Portuguese; if they are used in English, we
suggest refining the phrasing.

Corresponding author
Francisco Cesário can be contacted at: [email protected]

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