Experimental Design
Within two regions of a large German retail company, we will randomly assign half of the districts to a treatment group of stores in which newly hired employees are welcomed with a new onboarding event.
Stores in the treated districts:
Store managers in the treated districts are asked to apply the following procedure. Before a new employee starts to work in the store, store managers will announce the arrival of this new employee using a poster in the break room. Further, they will organize a short social event on the new employee’s first day. Employees on the morning shift will be asked to stay 15 minutes longer, and employees on the afternoon shift will be asked to come 15 minutes earlier (attendance is voluntary but will be counted as working time). During this period the new employee will have the opportunity to get to know the attending colleagues over a joint small meal/snack. For this event, each store manager receives a budget of 25€ to buy food and drinks from the store. Additionally, during that get-together, new employees will receive a personalized gift (box of chocolates or other gift with a value of 4€) with a handwritten post-it note welcoming them to the team. Store managers will also hand over the initial training plan. While the plan is identical to the plan used in the control group, store managers are also reminded of the importance of the social aspects in the training plan (e.g. regular feedback meetings).
Stores in the control districts:
The current onboarding process will remain unchanged, except for the onboarding survey described below. Store managers will hand over the initial training plan during the first day of the new employee.
The survey:
In both regions participating in the project a new onboarding survey is introduced for all newly hired employees. This survey measures the perceived success of the onboarding process, as well as the extent to which new employees identify with the organization, their colleagues, and their supervisors. It will also elicit survey measures of affective commitment, communication in the stores, perception of supervisor competence, appreciation by the supervisor, engagement, the willingness to recommend the firm as employer, as well as the personality traits agreeableness and extraversion and preferences for reciprocity. All new employees (both control and treatment group) in these two regions will receive the onboarding survey within their first week of employment and again after three months to measure both short- and long-term effects of the new onboarding process. If the contracts of the new employees are terminated either by themselves or the company within the first three month of employment, they will receive an exit questionnaire. This questionnaire elicits the reasons to quit, future employment, the willingness to recommend the firm as employer, identification with the former colleagues, supervisors and the organization, affective commitment, engagement and demographic information. Six to twelve months after the project start, we will also survey store managers to elicit their feedback on operational processes of the onboarding, their identification with the subordinates as well as the organization, communication in the stores, their perception of team cohesion in the market, their affective commitment and their belief about their employees’ commitment, their engagement, and reciprocity intentions.
Proxies for compliance:
We will measure store managers’ compliance with the treatment using different proxies. Managers are asked to send the receipts (for the food and beverages consumed during the onboarding event and the gift) to an email address that we have access to. The firm has also committed to send us reports from the respective ledger where these bookings are made (but which is also used for other events). Our survey also includes an open question in which the new hires are asked about their experience on the first working day.
Evaluation and Roll-Out:
After the project phase of one year, the company will evaluate the success of the project and decide about a roll-out of the (optimized) special onboarding events.
Sample Exclusions:
- Stores that change the district and by this also change the treatment status, will be excluded from the final sample
- Stores that are newly opened or get permanently closed within the experimental period