Making Sense of the Relationship Between Organizational Socialization and Employability

Introduction

In conjunction with honing their critical thinking skills to function in society, many professionals develop their talents, skills, and abilities to secure employment. It’s imperative for firms to comprehend how organizational members experience organizations, so they can adequately prepare professionals for the workplace (Gates, 2009). Moreover, as societies around the United States become more diverse, according to the United States Census Bureau (2021) as well as Whitford (2020), scholars and practitioners will benefit from extending their comprehension of how employees are socialized and how they experience organizations, as talented employees can help organizations gain a competitive advantage (Gates, 2009; 2019). Consequently, organizations that are impervious to the influence socialization has on professionals will miss critical opportunities to enhance employability with superior socialization.

While employability could be a factor for some professionals, many organizations are wrestling with the challenge of attracting and retaining good talent. The great exodus, according to The Great Resignation: The Mass Exodus from the Workforce (2022), may have hiring managers frantic about retaining personnel while leaders desperately seek to keep them engaged (Gates, 2023; Macey & Schneider, 2008). These changing environments may have implications for organizational socialization (Jablin, 1984; 1987; 2001; Gates, 2009) as some of the beliefs about socialization may no longer resonate with organizational members nor scholars and practitioners. Extant research made assumptions about how organizational members were socialized (Jablin, 1984; 1987; 2001; Gates, 2009), and subsequent research needs to examine current organizational socialization frameworks to determine how they capture, or fail to capture, the essence of how employees perceive they are socialized into organizations (Gates, 2009) and how to remain employable.

Making sense of organizational socialization may help organizational members devise strategies to enhance their employability. Scholars suggest that organizational members simultaneously shape and react to their organizational settings through a process referred to as sense making (Thurlow & Mills, 2009). People enact their roles while they are also obtaining feedback from their environments, enabling them to modify their actions accordingly (Weick, 1988). Weick (1993) maintained that “The basic idea of sensemaking is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” (p. 635). When it comes to organizational communication and organizational socialization, many employees strive to make sense of their organizations in order to enhance their employability. They want to retain their jobs, so it becomes necessary to adhere to the cultural norms and values espoused by their respective organizations.