Buddy System at Work: Definition, Processes, & More

A buddy is a friend or companion who walks beside you through various scenarios. People have study buddies, gym buddies, and even work buddies.

This piece highlights work buddies, not from a social point of view but a professional one.

In this piece, we’ll highlight the buddy system that fosters professional development in the workplace. We’ll define the buddy system, describe who needs it, and more.

Let’s begin.

Defining The Buddy System

Remember the seasoned employee assigned to you to help you get acquainted with the company culture?

That is the buddy system in play!

The first record of the term ’buddy system’ dates back to 1942. This arrangement is a cooperative system that pairs individuals for formal and informal learning. The buddy system emphasizes productivity, instruction, company culture, welfare, and safety in the workplace.

Who Is The Perfect Candidate of the Buddy System?

The first ideal candidate for the buddy system is a new hire. This process links the new employee to one of the current employees as part of the orientation and employee onboarding process. The existing employee has to be familiar with the company’s procedures, operations, policies, and culture.

Besides new hires, here are two personas that might also benefit from the buddy system:

• Role or Department Change: The buddy system applies when you are transferred to a new role. This can happen through a promotion or department or team change. The buddy an HR manager links you with offers valuable information that smooths your transition into the new role.
• Remote Work: Remote workers are also candidates for the buddy system. This arrangement helps employees of a remote-first company stay connected and grow despite the physical distance.

What is the Role of the Buddy System?

The buddy system fosters faster integration into the team, leading to an increase in productivity. A study at Microsoft attests that new employees within the buddy system record a 23% employee satisfaction. These hires with buddies were happier with the onboarding process. 73% attest that this system has made them more productive.

The other pivotal roles of the buddy system include:

• To Ease Orientation: A successful onboarding program ensures a new hire seamlessly adapts to the company’s culture. The buddy system helps students or new employees familiarize themselves with the institution’s rules, policies, and norms. They become productive employees faster this way.
• To Provide Mentoring: The buddy system can offer organizations a platform to boost employees’ mentoring skills. The buddy becomes the mentor, and the new employee assigned to them becomes the mentee. This can help employees advance their communication, managerial, and team collaboration skills.
• To Provide Support: A buddy arrangement allows employees to grow genuine connections among employees. This way, they adapt faster to a positive work culture. Buddies can support each other through emotional or social interaction, especially during difficult times.
• To Provide Safety: Having a buddy at jobs, events, and other activities gives you a sense of safety. Since a buddy is looking out for you, even in an official setting, they support employee well-being.
• To Offer Training: The buddy system plays a huge role in fostering training and education. Having one fastens learning because they act as a personal tutor offering fresh ideas and snippets on the brand’s unwritten rules. They are the real-work employee handbooks guiding you through all company policies and procedures.
• To Ease Integration: Whether it’s a new job position, role or team, your buddy eases your integration into the team. They get you up to speed by taking you through what the group has done and explaining your position within the expert team. This minimizes time and resource wastage.
• To Gather Feedback: An organization can use the buddy system as a source of valuable feedback. Through these buddy exchanges, management can gain insights into key findings like employee satisfaction. This constructive feedback helps the entire organization improve its offerings.

How are Matches Achieved on a Buddy System?

When you join a team or job, the buddy you get has to undergo vetting to fit the role. Management has to assign a qualified person to this role.

However, how do they match the new hires to potential buddies?

Below are some constraints management can use for buddy matching:

By Skills and Interests

Buddy matching can be based on skills and interests. For example, you get a buddy in tech in your new role as an intern IT assistant. This match ensures you can learn from your buddy through career-based interactions. Technology topics you’re both passionate about can be the perfect conversation starters to break the ice.

By Role-Based Matching

This arrangement links employees with an onboarding buddy senior or equivalent to what one does. This way, you learn through an apprenticeship. This makes it an active-learning experience.

By Employee Preference

Sometimes, management might ask you to describe the attributes of a work or school buddy. They then find the buddy based on the characteristics you give them. Your preferences might be based on gender, job role, interests or even age bracket. This matching model helps foster a positive attitude toward the new role, making it more enjoyable.

Through Automated Matching

Another model for buddy matching is automatic. In this arrangement, organizations use software to automate the buddy-matching process. The software uses pre-set factors to match you to the most beneficial buddy.

Through Cross-Functional Collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration is matching a new hire to another employee in another department. For example, you get paired with someone in the finance department while your role is in customer service. Despite the discrepancies, you can still learn more about the company based on social interaction. It reinforces bonds across departments.

What Makes a Buddy Program Successful?

A buddy program’s success relies on a few factors, which we’ll highlight here. Understanding these factors is critical to ensuring the interactions remain educative and productive.

That said, here are some of the factors that make a buddy program a success:

Accurate Matches

Accurate matching links a person to the proper fit that benefits organizations. When the criteria for matching are well-organized, the buddy relationships introduce the new hires to the right experiences. Poor matching leads to conflict and delays in the onboarding process. If management overlooks the need to match a new employee to a qualified buddy, productivity will lower.

Proper Management

Another key component is having the proper management in place. This entails a team of neutral parties that can help squash conflicts within the system when they arise.

This overseeing body should also use powerful tools to manage these relationships. Specific software can offer features that help this team better manage the buddy arrangement.

Supportive Workplace

If the general work environment isn’t supportive, onboarding activities get harder. Friendly collègues welcomes the new employees, making them feel valued and welcome. A supportive environment creates a safe and open space where you can ask questions and seek help when stuck. It boosts both formal and informal learning.

Clear Guidelines

Even though the term ‘buddy’ sounds casual, a successful system has guidelines. These are the codes of conduct these relationships uphold. These rules help both parties remain respectful and compliant. They lay down the expectations of the relationship.

Feedback Channels

No matter the buddies’ rankings, management has to set up feedback channels. This promotes free expression for new hires who might still be shy about airing their grievances. If they require a buddy change, these are the channels they use.

In addition to the exchange of ideas, the organization receives direct feedback on the system’s effectiveness. They gain insight into mentoring, supportiveness, and other concerns. These channels can be anonymous messaging software, feedback surveys, or suggestion boxes.

Continuous Learning

A buddy program aims to help all parties grow and advance. So, some of the activities to include must support knowledge transfer and constant growth. These can be ongoing workshops and training sessions.

Reward Systems

If a person has been an exceptional buddy, with the person under them winning, they deserve recognition. Companies that do this encourage other existing employees to volunteer.

Some rewards include bonuses, paid time off, or gift cards.

What are the Development Benefits of the Buddy System?

The buddy system is beneficial to all parties, including the company. Some of those advantages are:

• Smooth Onboarding: The onboarding process flows seamlessly when a new employee gets a warm and personalized welcome. In a short time, they learn about the company culture, its norms, and procedures.
• Boosts Communication: A successful buddy program encourages open and candid communication among employees despite official ranks. This gives employees comfort and safety when asking questions and seeking help.
• Fosters Knowledge Transfer: The buddy system enables experienced employees with lots of experience to train new hires. This ensures that all vital company information is passed on, further smoothing operations.
• Boosts Employee Engagement: A working buddy system boosts employee engagement. Employees who connect regardless of their ranks work better and are happier. This translates to higher job productivity and satisfaction.
• Mentoring and Support: It’s always daunting when you are the new kid on the block. You have no idea what to do or what to say. A working buddy system offers support and mentoring to help you become part of the team. You can advance your professional and personal qualities through these mentoring initiatives.
• Reduces Employee Turnover: Employees who feel undervalued or unwelcome tend to leave their jobs faster. A working buddy system reduces these instances because of the supportive environment, reducing a company’s turnover costs.
• Increases Team Collaboration: Buddies work together to accomplish tasks and reach career goals. This improves collaboration among employees, team performance and productivity.

What are the Challenges of the Buddy System?

The buddy system offers a great deal of value, but it also poses a few challenges. The most prominent one is usually mismatching, which leads to employee frustration and communication breakdowns. For instance, matching an employee with an extroverted personality to a buddy who's introverted can cause some friction.

The solution is to restructure buddy-matching using industry and personality-specific criteria.

Besides mismatching, the other challenges and their solutions are:

Inadequate Buddy training

If an organization fails to offer ample buddy training, the system crumbles. A buddy can only effectively support a partner with the right skills, digital tools, and expertise.

The remedy here is first to offer formal training for buddies. Ensure the training defines their roles and responsibilities. This training must also provide valuable lessons on mentoring and leadership techniques.

Clashing Timeslots

The relationship strains if a buddy and trainee have demanding workloads or clashing timelines. This makes it challenging to check in and offer regular support to the new employees, which frustrates them.

Companies can set allocated buddy reserves time for buddy activities on specific days. Such an arrangement encourages the buddies to collaborate and reach their professional goals faster.

Over-Dependence

The buddy system also poses this challenge: The new employee becomes overly dependent on their buddy. This hinders the trainer’s growth, as they cannot work on their tasks.

Setting clear work boundaries can encourage autonomy, even for new employees. A trainer should gradually reduce meetings and interactions to grow the new hire’s confidence and independence.

Bias

A buddy relationship might introduce bias into the workplace. For instance, a buddy may impose their opinions on a new employee.

To avoid such instances, a company should use diversity and inclusion techniques during onboarding. These initiatives encourage independent thinking, allowing the new employee to make decisions based on factual information.

Getting the Buddy System To Work For You

Getting a buddy system to work for you requires meticulous planning and execution. You start by first understanding what it is and what it takes to make it a success. Then, grasp who needs this training and outline the match-making criteria.

Once you set it up, you can start implementing its pivotal roles of easing orientation to gathering feedback. This set-up involves proper matching, managing the system, and encouraging feedback. These benefit your organization’s onboarding process, communication, knowledge transfer, and engagement. You’ll also experience a boost in mentoring and support, collaboration, and reduced employee turnover.

But it’s not all rosy because it poses a few challenges we’ve given you the solution to.

The buddy system is effective when implemented correctly. Qooper Mentoring Software can help organizations start seeing remarkable professional growth within their teams with New Hire - Onboarding Buddy Programs.