Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words: 

How do you think technology can be used best to socialize new employees and get them productive as quickly as possible? When would using technology not be a good way to socialize employees?

Reply to at least two of your classmates. Be constructive and professional in your responses.

** Classmates responses attached**

Week 5 _ Classmate posts:

Leah Wrote:

Hello class,

Technology has its pros and cons. A pro of in my line of work we rely heavily on technology. The only time an employee does not have to work off of a computer is during the first 3 weeks of in class training. Our organization is global so communication is sent daily between our Texas office, Florida office, Japan office, Brazil office, and our India office. We also receive emails from our other locations who are working on a different client contract and the main corporate office located in New York. New hires start out with their main communication to come from the corporate office in New York before they can really dive into the specific work we do in our Texas office, this is why technology is so important in my organization. The main downfall when we first started two years ago was employees getting on YouTube, Pandora, Spotify and social media. We started seeing a massive decrease in production and did a deep dive to underline the cause and it turned out to be an abuse of those internet sites. Corporate then put a ban on those sites since they could lead to extremely sensitive information being leaked. Now if any employee tries to get on any of those sites it brings up a restricted screen and their personal work accounts such as email among other applications become locked and they have to get IT to unlock their account after doing a security scan. If this happens the employee is subject to punishment that could lead to termination depending on the circumstances.

Rachel Wrote:

Technology can certainly make certain processes of socialization more effective within an organization, while also lessening the effectiveness of other socialization processes. One example of technology supporting the socialization of employees and improving their immediate productivity with an organization was provided by Phillips & Gully (2015): Goldman Sachs utilized a consistent email thread that sent out helpful tips and insights about becoming a part of the Goldman Sachs culture to new hires. This more simple use of technology allowed Goldman Sachs to continuously socialize employees for the first several months of their employment, ensuring that even in an organization as large as Goldman Sachs, new hires had long-term socialization upon their start with the firm. This type of follow up may be particularly helpful for larger firms and technology can benefit this process through more than just email communication: having Skype for Business or an internal organization website for communication between colleagues, departments, and teams, allows new hires to stay in communication with any mentors or new acquaintances they’ve made, or continue building their network and learning more about the organization without leaving their workspace. Having available resources like this may allow the employee to integrate faster and thus improve their productivity more rapidly. Technology may not be the best support to initial socialization programs, however. Face to face communication can be extremely beneficial for any type of initial socialization at an organization—allowing new hires to engage with a socialization program in real time, ask questions, network, and get a feel for the culture of an organization is often more impactful with face-to-face interaction throughout the process, rather than only learning about the organization virtually. Technology can supplement the continued socialization of new employees, but having an in-person, engaging socialization process upon a new hire starting with the organization sets a more solid foundation from which to continue building upon.

Phillips, J.M., & Gully, S.M. (2015). Strategic Staffing, Third Edition. [University of Phoenix]. Available from

https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323576014/cfi/6/6!/4/2/30/2@0:0.00