There are three stages of organizational socialization process; anticipatory, encounter and setting in. Anticipatory is the first stage of an employee experience in an organization and take place during the recruitment process (Taylor and Francis, 2010). At this stage an employee needs to get a glimpse of the organizational culture, image and values. Therefore the organization is required to project the realistic image of its self, its values and culture. The employee also needs to understand the job requirement and through this he/ she develop an expectation on how it is like to work for the organization. Itis at this stage that the individual make a decision on whether to join the organization or not.
The encounter also referred to as the entry or the breaking in stage is the second stage of employee socialization within a new organization (Taylor and Francis, 2010). At this stage the employee has already made the choice to join the organization and now the expectations he/ she had about the organization are going to be matched with reality. The employee will need information about the inside working of the organization; the role he/ she is going to play in the organization and the tasks, duties and responsibilities of his new job.
The encounter stage gradually transforms into the third stage of organizational socialization referred to as setting in or the metamorphosis stage (Taylor and Francis, 2010). At this stage the employee has accepted the values, image and culture of the organization and needs to make the necessarily adjustments to fit in to the organization. Comprehensive orientation of the job is required and therefore orientation and training programs are crucial at this stage for the employee productivity is to be optimized (Raymond, 2010).
References
Taylor and Francis (2010), Your Socialization Experiences: Stages of Socialization, retrieved on October 24, 2010, from Http://mgtclass.mgt.unm.edu/.../06.Your%20Socialization%20Experiences_Stages%20of%20Socialization.htm
Raymond A Noe (2010), Employee Training and Development, 5th Edition, McGraw-Hill Irwin New York, New York
