From Rice Fields To Buddy Lunches: What My Peace Corps Service Taught Me About the New Employee Experience
In my mid-twenties I decided to take a hiatus from the corporate world to pursue a life-long desire of joining the Peace Corps. Little did I know that my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand would end up teaching me more about adapting to the workplace than any experience in the US.
When you experience work on two different continents, and in two very different environments, you not only realize what separates the two cultures, but what connects them as well. In fact, that may be the biggest lesson I learned: despite the vast cultural differences between the rice fields of Thailand and our conference rooms here in America, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. Especially when it comes to integrating new employees into an organization.
In this three part series, I’ve identified five common truths I discovered during my time in rural Thailand. Along with each one, I’ve provided an action item for how HR professionals, managers, or anyone passionate about improving life at work can incorporate these universal truths into the new hire experience.
Part 1: The importance of communal eating and having a good guide.
Truth #1: Communal eating brings people together
If you’ve ever been to Thailand, you know Thais love to eat! What surprised me most, however, is how communal the experience of eating is in Thailand. As a communal society, Thais try to eat together whenever possible. Indeed, meals are commonly eaten family style, often with the youngest person at the table serving the others. This extends even to the workplace, where we were always encouraged to bring enough snacks for everyone, and to “never eat alone” (a truth so important, my boss Keith Ferrazzi made it the title of one of his best-selling books). At times this could be frustrating and inconvenient, especially when I found myself in a rush. But this practice ended up giving me a strong sense of community — and taught me the importance of slowing down! My coworkers and I ate together, did dishes together, and of course worked together. In many ways, I came to see that our eating together bonded us more than the work itself, as we learned about our passions outside of work, our families, and our backgrounds.
There is plenty of evidence on why taking a break for lunch and stepping away from your desk is important for creative thinking and productivity. Too often, however, organizations forget to use the power of food as a way to facilitate bonding and connection with their new hires. They forget because they aren’t doing it themselves. In fact, research shows only one in five Americans take a lunch break at all (Forbes). For this reason, it’s especially important to embed a first day lunch, coffee “walk-and-talks,” and other connective food experiences into your new hire’s formal onboarding and ongoing experience. By doing this, you are caring for your new hires’ most basic needs, getting to know them on a more personal level, and signaling to them that your company is a place they can grow and thrive.
What to do: Have a new hire joining your company? Find out their favorite food, restaurant, or take note of any dietary restrictions and take them out to a first day lunch that acknowledges this awareness. Missed day 1? Encourage their manager to take their next 1:1 on the road and grab a coffee, tea, or treat.
Truth #2: A good guide is essential when adapting to a new culture
Living as a foreigner in a strange land means you will undoubtedly make blunders, which are at best funny and at worst offensive. I surely made many of these, like when I tried to turn on the outside lights and accidentally turned off the power in my host family’s house. Or when I mispronounced the Thai word “bai” and ended up shouting “bus stop” instead of “go away” at a stray dog. (I’m not sure who was more confused, the dog or the passersby on the street). Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have found Mic — or rather to have had her find me, when she invited me out to lunch with her and some other colleagues from the town hall.
In all ways, Mic was truly the model guide. As the village’s local social worker, she was not only very well respected, but she also knew the community inside and out. Perhaps most importantly, she was someone who cared about me and would give me feedback, a virtue extremely difficult to come by in the very polite and harmonious Thai culture. Mic immediately took me under her wing and proved invaluable during my time in Thailand. She was the person of whom I could ask anything, with whom I could be vulnerable, and who helped integrate me into the village. Without her, I would have felt lost, unsure, and apprehensive about my place in the new culture. The only thing I would have been confident about is my ability to continue making all sorts of mistakes! In return, I helped re-invigorate Mic’s passion for community service and became a partner for her as we challenged the status quo in public health and education together!
It shouldn’t take going to Asia to know that a guide is extremely valuable for any new experience. So why hasn’t corporate America caught up? There is simply no excuse for not assigning a guide or “onboarding buddy” to our new hires, especially when study after study tells us how helpful new hires find them! In fact, in a 2014 Bamboo HR study 56% of new hires said they’d wished they’d had a buddy/mentor starting in week one.
What to do: Set up a buddy program at your organization. Keep it simple; remember something is better than nothing. Let buddies self-select or have the manager choose, but reiterate that the buddy should voluntarily participate. When implemented correctly, a buddy program is not only good for the new hire, but energizing to the buddy, too. For example, you may have a rising Millennial star who is itching to manage others, but you don’t have an open position. Consider having this person act as a buddy to incoming new hires as a means of helping them flex their burgeoning interest in developing people. This is a great way to retain and engage your top performers, who may feel neglected by the attention that your new hires are getting. According to a 2015 Gallup study, increased attention to new hires can sometimes cause your veteran employees to feel neglected. Asking interested and talented employees to be a buddy to a new hire is a great practice to strengthen both new and current employee engagement.
If you have a buddy program, reach out to recent new hires and their buddies to see what’s been working and what could be improved. Consider adding a first day buddy lunch if you haven’t already.
Just be clear about who’s paying!
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Jennifer is the Lead Content Writer and consultant for Yoi Corp, an employee success platform that uses behavioral science and decision-making algorithms to drive workforce performance and engagement. At Yoi, she uses her background in employee engagement, strengths-based coaching, and culture change to help enterprises create exceptional experiences for their new hires.
