Organization Onboarding and Job Shadowing: A Comprehensive Guide

This essay explores the significance of job shadowing as a practical on-the-job training method for both new and existing employees within an organization. It highlights how job shadowing provides invaluable insights into specific roles, expected deliverables, and workplace interactions, offering a richer understanding compared to traditional job descriptions. The essay emphasizes the effectiveness of job shadowing in easing new employee integration, facilitating career transitions, and enabling observational learning. It identifies suitable roles for job shadowing, such as restaurant staff, medical professionals, manufacturing personnel, and administrative staff. Furthermore, the essay outlines a four-step process for conducting successful job shadowing, including selecting participants, reviewing essential information, coordinating logistics, and evaluating the experience to ensure positive outcomes and continued employee engagement. The essay concludes by reinforcing the value of job shadowing in fostering employee development and organizational success.

Running Head: ORGANIZATION ONBOARDING JOB SHADOWING 1
Organization Onboarding Job Shadowing
Job shadowing is a form of on the work preparation in which a new worker or existing
employee gets the chance to familiarize with a new job, observes, and follows a trained
employee. It is useful to use job shadowing to train specific jobs (Reese, 2005).
Job shadowing gives a student, intern, or employee an adequate knowledge about what is
done by a particular employee, the important deliverables anticipated from the profession, and
the employee with whom the contract interrelates. Much experience rather than job description is
provided by job shadowing since employee describes his or her work (Lozada, 2001) .
When an organization is onboarding new employees, or when the existing long-term
employees want to learn new thing concerning the job, using job shadowing will be effective and
reliable in training them. This is because much information is provided through job shadowing
and it will remove the fear of unknown from the employee. Job shadowing can also help the
employee who wishes to have potential moves or career opportunity through job transfer.
Job shadowing is important for practical jobs than theories, or when the key module of
learning is observation. When job shadowing, the recruits can view what is being done. But, in
job shadowing, the member experience and sees the gradations of how the job or the service is
done (Lozada, 2001)
While all job has the component of job shadowing as part of employee training, some
jobs which are effective to job shadowing include:
a) Restaurant employee: cooks, hosts, serving staff, etc.
b) Medical profession: occupational therapy, surgeon, radiologist, physical therapy,
etc.

ORGANIZATION ONBOARDING JOB SHADOWING 2
c) Manufacturing jobs: quality control, machine operators, supervisors etc.
d) Administration: administrative assistant, clerks, secretaries etc.
How to conduct job shadowing
There are four steps in conducting successful job shadowing, they include:
Step 1: select employee to participate
Before conducting job shadowing, the HR manager should be in a position to choose
those who are going to participate in the program. The program should be placed on recruits and
those employees who want to shift their career. The selected members should represent what is
needed in the organization.
Step 2: Review pertinent information to cover
It is essential to provide true information about the department. This should be done
without hiding any bit whether negative about the unit. For instance, when the department is
straggling to achieve its goals, it is essential to show the selected members about this. The
members will decide whether they are interested since there are some employees who are not
interested in working in department’s that lack defined process.
Step 3: Coordinate logistics
Adequate noticed should be provided to employees so that they can plan adequately.
Shadowing should be scheduled at a time that best reflects the average day of the job, and the
candidate should not observe the position at the busiest or the lagging time of the day.
Emphasize that this is the typical day and discuss challenges when volume fluctuates. Before the
set day, ensure there is adequate coverage by reviewing the schedule. An extra person can be

ORGANIZATION ONBOARDING JOB SHADOWING 3
added to provide that employees being shadowed can devote their full attention to the candidate
(Reese, 2005)
. Every candidate who is shadowed must sign a shadowing argument and the complete
form retained in the department file.
Step 4: Review evaluation
Question asked by the candidates should be noted since they reflect the candidate’s
interest and this can be used to gauge their continued interest. A debrief should also be scheduled
immediately in wrapping up shadowing experience. The team should be requested to share their
opinion about the candidate experience and their opinion regarding the candidate’s ability to fit
the existing. The evaluation should be used to encourage the new employee and encourage them
to be positive (Reese, 2005).
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References
Lozada, M. (2001). Job Shadowing--Career Exploration at Work. Techniques: Connecting
Education and Careers, 76(8), 30-33.
Reese, S. (2005). Exploring the World through Job Shadowing. Techniques Making Education
and Career Connections, 80(2), 18-23.