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New Employee Safety pp 109–124Cite as

New Employee Helping Behaviors

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Abstract

This chapter discusses new employee helping behaviors. A new employee may be very enthusiastic, even excited, about starting their new job. For school leavers, the new job may mark a big change in their life, the beginning of financial independence, and perhaps provide the ability to move away from home. For older individuals, a new job may provide much needed financial security. There are many reasons why a new job may be important to an individual, and these provide strong motivations for a new employee to demonstrate their commitment to the job, to the organization, and to their co-workers in order to ensure job security. While such commitment can be demonstrated via satisfactory job performance, it is possible that a new employee may try to go beyond this and actively seek opportunities to demonstrate their commitment by engaging in helping behaviors (random acts of helping). Put simply, they may attempt to help when they think there is an opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, new employee helping can put themselves and their co-workers at risk. This chapter describes the safety risks associated with helping, and how new employee safety can be managed by controlling helping behaviors, particularly in the initial period of employment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand

    Christopher D. B. Burt

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  1. Christopher D. B. Burt
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Correspondence to Christopher D. B. Burt .

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Burt, C.D.B. (2015). New Employee Helping Behaviors. In: New Employee Safety. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18684-9_8

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