Module 2: Corporate Etiquette
2.1 New Employees
Press the play arrow to continue the narrative (2 minutes 15 seconds).
Note: The audio transcript is available in the footnotes.
First Impressions and introducing yourself
First impressions count, especially when you are a new employee or joining a new team. It is critical to establish a demeanour that is a serious, mature, and professional from the outset—a person whom other people can count on and want to work with in the future.
When making first impressions, consider appearance, warm greetings, and non-verbal communication.
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Please watch the video on how to introduce yourself:
How to Introduce Yourself at a New Job
The matrix organization and key contacts
Matrix organization
An matrix organization displays the pecking order among various positions and team roles within the firm. The larger the company, the more complicated the chart. However, it is wise to ascertain the overall map of where you work—how is the corporate structure set up, who reports to whom, where are resources, for example, the Informational Technology department and the Payroll Office, located? A matrix organization can serve as a map through the maze of connections and allow you to build work relationships (Binod and Macdonald, 2017, pp. xvi-xviii).
To learn more about a matrix organization, review: The Matrix Organization
Key contacts
You will want to begin gathering up key contacts from your first day at work, including supervisors, team leaders, and other colleagues. Who holds the decision-making power in a department, on a team, or for a project? What are your responsibilities to these individuals and what obligations do they have to you? Your key contacts may become mentors at some point offering advice, support, materials, feedback, and guidance as you navigate your new job and comply with company policies.
People can be difficult to work with or work for, so creating your own personal network of allies is crucial to corporate survival. After your initial learning curve on the job begins to plateau, you should consider extending your internal networks to other departments perhaps, when collaborating on cross-functional team projects, not to mention meeting other employees through seminars, social gatherings and other corporate events (Binod and Macdonald, 2017, pp. xvi-xviii).
Manners and work habits
In the workplace, punctuality, politeness and respect, and office hygiene is important to success. See the table below for more details.
| Punctuality | Acclimating to the workforce takes time, perseverance, resilience, and grit, which is a very different world than many new employees have experienced prior to landing their first jobs. The top expectation that employers have of you is to be on time and to have solid time management skills. Making excuses for being late is considered very poor form (Zinn, 2021, pp.32-32). A corollary of punctuality is the ability to meet deadlines at work, and, unlike at university, an extension is very unlikely.
Time management is a challenge for the most seasoned professionals, so here is some help with time management strategies: |
| Politeness and Respect | Being friendly, courteous, and polite to everyone whom you interact with at work is another essential habit that you must develop. Though the level of formality of your office environment may vary from job to job, being disrespectful—especially to superiors and older employees—is the beginning of the end of your time there. You need to show respect by active listening, practicing empathy, using inclusive language, expressing gratitude, offering assistance to others, minimizing distractions—especially those from your mobile devices, holding doors open for others, moderating the volume of your voice in shared spaces, and communicating clearly and concisely in oral and written mediums.
Remember the 5 C’s of communication: clarity, concision, coherence, completeness, and critical thinking. For further information on personal qualities and behaviours admired by the work world, review this article:
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| Maintaining your office environment/cubicle (in person and online) |
A final aspect of developing good employee behaviour is maintaining the office space or cubicle that you may or may not share with another colleague. Good maintenance means keeping everything clean, everything in its proper place, and keeping personalization to a minimum. Your space is owned by your employer, so it is not yours in a legal sense as you are only temporarily using it (Zinn, 2021, p.46). Organize yourself in the physical space through the use of organizers, shelves, and supply and filing cabinets, if necessary.
The space should be clutter free at the end of the day before going home, whether or not the space is shared. Supervisors will casually take note of messy employees. Be cognizant if you have to book desk time with your other colleagues. If you decide to decorate your cubicle with a handful of personal items, keep them tasteful, positive, and not divisive, especially if hot desking. Keep your politics to yourself (Post et al., 2014, pp.88-93; Harr, 2015, pp. 41-47). In terms of the digital space, you need to use folders, labels, and cloud storage to manage all your files and keep your computer desktop clutter free as well, enhancing productivity and reducing the stress of looking for a needle (file) in a haystack (random drive). Make external back-up copies of all your work on a daily basis. Keep up-to-date your internet connections, laptops, and software as well as your antivirus programs. Consistently perform system maintenance to thwart breakdowns and to maintain a secure online office environment. For more detailed information about digital maintenance, please see: 10 Essential Computer Maintenance Tips Employees often have to eat and drink at their stations during the lunch hours or at other times during the day; therefore, it is vital that you clean up after yourself (your parents do not work—or even more frightening—live here). You need to wipe down surfaces, keyboards, monitors, pads, and mice, etc. Ask where the cleaning supplies are kept and if any special precautions need to be taken around office electronics. This cleaning regime also applies to conference or lunch rooms.
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Audio transcript for Module 2.1 New Employees
Your interview with Randolph Marketing, Inc. went swimmingly well! You loved your potential new boss, Samantha as you raced through the interview, talking non-stop about yourself. Three days later, your phone rings and you’re offered the position of Junior Marketing Assistant. You’re so excited! This is your dream job, life is falling into place, and the view from the 30 – floor office tower is totally awesome!
However, one week into the job, you’re feeling stressed out and insecure. The atmosphere at Randolph Marketing seems to have suddenly morphed since the interview. You’re starting to have doubts about staying, especially now that you’ve met other employees who don’t seem very pleasant. On Tuesday, the department manager, Haroshi, dropped in to see your supervisor, Samantha, who introduced you. Haroshi seems really charismatic. Naturally, you wanted to make an impactful first impression, so you launched into your personal branding spiel, which focuses on self-reflection, resilience, and story-telling schemas. Haroshi shook hands, yet he cut you off in mid-sentence, noting that you were 37 minutes late for work this morning. Really? How did he know? You tried to explain that it was not your fault–you weren’t late–the streetcar was! Samantha smirked at you.
On top of everything else, you’re providing data entry support for other marketing assistants’ projects and made to fetch lunch and snacks for your co-workers. Your frustration is growing since, after all, you hold a business degree in marketing; moreover, you’ve begun to observe that the firm has many more, older employees—Boomers and Gen Xers–than you imagined. You ponder why the staff, who seemed so cordial at first, now seem so uptight. No lie.
On Thursday, Jayne, was angry with you for leaving a tiny amount of cookie-crumbs near the laptop on the desk that you share, not to mention complaining about the discarded remains of your lunch in the garbage can, which began to smell. Where else were you supposed to throw out your garbage when finished eating?
Why didn’t someone inform you what the world of work and office politics is really like, and what are some of the ways to make a solid, professional first impression?
