Onboarding Practices in the Bhutanese Civil Service Agencies

Abstract

Onboarding is the process of integrating a new hire to an organization and its culture, as well as providing them with the resources and knowledge necessary to contribute effectively to the team (Maurer 2020). The objective of this research paper was to find out the adequacy and effectiveness of existing onboarding practices in the Bhutanese civil service from the perspectives of newly recruited civil servants. It is based on the conceptual framework of onboarding developed by Tayla Bauer (2010) that comprises of compliance, clarification, culture and connection. The data was collected from a sample size of 210 civil servants who joined the civil service in 2021 and 2022 respectively. The analysed data revealed that only 53.10% of the respondents felt adjusted in their new jobs upon completion of their onboarding programmes. This could be due to a number of factors associated with inadequate resources to implement onboarding programmes in agencies, lack of clarity on the duration of the programmes and poor planning. Among all the key components of the onboarding, the connection component is ranked lower than others which calls for more attention in terms of fostering fraternity bonds and creating the sense of belongingness with the new employees. One of the ways to improve the onboarding process could be through institutionalization of proper mentorship for all the new employees which is not comprehensively implemented across the civil service agencies.