The Relationship Between the Onboarding Training Program and Employees’ Intentions to Leave an Organization

Abstract

Nowadays organizations start to understand the importance of new employee onboarding and training. Having a structured onboarding training programme can benefit any organization and its employee in many different ways. When one is making his or her employees feel welcomed and well prepared, he or she can determine them to speed up much faster and, as a consequence, can convince them to choose the organization for a long-term job.
Therefore the aim of this study is to explore the relationship between an onboarding training programme as part of onboarding overall and employee’s intentions to leave the organization. An onboarding training programme was analysed in detail based on participants’ experiences and reflections. The analysis will be based on the specific onboarding training programme within Regulatory Affairs, Novo Nordisk. The goal of the study was achieved by collecting empirical data through qualitative interviews and a survey within the context of an embedded single case study. Novo Nordisk, Regulatory affairs onboarding training programme was used as a case study. Following this, it has been possible to uncover contributions to the existing theory, more specifically, the Multi-level onboarding training framework. Data analysis was done in order to find out how each factor (training methods, social agents/stakeholder and proactivity) from the theoretical framework can affect employee learning outcomes as well as proximal and distal outcomes. The findings of the study showed that there is a relationship between the onboarding training programme and employee’s learning. The findings of the research also showed that there is a relationship between employee’s learning and proximal outcomes such as: role clarity, skills acquisition, social integration, organization fit and motivation. Finally, as a consequence, findings also confirmed that there is a relationship to distal outcomes such as: employee turnover, job satisfaction, performance and organizational commitment. Thus, as this thesis has provided theoretical contributions and recommendations for implementation, it can serve as a tool for further research.