Abstract
In recent years, onboarding has become one of the hot topics of the HRM community, as researchers have shown a link between successful onboarding and employee motivation, retention and a reduction in time-to-performance for new employees. This paper examines how onboarding theory can be put into practice and thus reduce time-to-performance for newly graduated lieutenants who start their first position after officers academy. Within the Danish Army there has been no effort to looking at onboarding as a concept, and therefore this paper finds its relevance, as it is the first-time onboarding theory has been used to examine how the regiment - specifically Aalborg Barracks (Trænregimentet) - and the company effectively receives new officers from the academy; officers who have no prior experience other than that from basic training and the academy. On the basis of semi-structured interviews, onboarding theory is applied to analyse how organizational socialization, newcomer proactive behaviors, and mentoring is used to onboard newly commissioned officers at Aalborg Barracks. This paper uses the methods based on the scientific theory of social constructivism. Through qualitative method the empirical data was collected with the use of semiconstructed interviews. The interviews were conducted on the background of an interview guide designed using deductive method. The paper concludes that to successfully onboard a newly commissioned lieutenant a company commander needs to provide the lieutenant with networks and a mentor that can provide formal social interactions with peers, which provides the lieutenant with the possibility to establish a reference base for the development of leadership, handling of assigned tasks and exchange of knowledge. The paper also concludes that the lieutenant must show proactive behavior to gather needed information in regards to tasks at hand.