What is onboarding?
Onboarding is a key process of integrating new employees into the organisation, thereby enhancing both their professional, social, cultural and organisational integration. As a result, employees feel welcomed as part of the organisation and better prepared for the tasks ahead of them. The sooner the new employee feels welcome and fully informed, the better and quicker they will be able to contribute to the organisation successfully.
Onboarding procedures are common in the private sector but often absent in academic institutions. In particular for newly hired Early Career Researchers (ECR), namely PhD candidates, such procedures will strongly impact both their integration into the organisation and clarification of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in their programme. In order to maximize their impact, it is therefore important that onboarding procedures are approved and supported by supervisors and Postgraduate offices. While it has been shown that successful onboarding contributes to increased well-being and motivation, many ECRs often feel somewhat lost and poorly supported when entering academia, leading to doubt, insecurity and sometimes even an early abandonment of their research project.
UCT and onboarding
In collaboration with the PRIDE network (Professionals in Doctoral Education), a working group was formed with the aim of drafting a publication on onboarding, focusing for the first time on doctoral candidates and postdocs and their adaptation process at the university.
UCT Prague initially launched an extensive questionnaire to assess awareness of onboarding, whether and how many people have encountered it, and what they would welcome within the academic environment. After evaluating the questionnaire, meetings were held in the private sector with HR professionals. We wanted to verify how onboarding is conducted in private companies and how we can leverage their know-how and experiences in our context.
The collected materials and interviews with HR professionals were used to create an adaptation plan, which was piloted from September 2023 at three institutes of UCT Prague. The resulting adaptation plan, which is part of this page, will serve the needs of UCT Prague supervisors who work with newly hired doctoral candidates. Furthermore, the adaptation plan will be utilized for the PRIDE network publication, serving as a foundation for other European universities.
