The relationship between millennial new employees’ organizational socialization outcomes and the satisfaction of physical work environment

Millennials are the largest generation in the US workforce today, and they are thought to have significantly different working preferences compared to other generations. Literature shows increased rates of turnover among millennials with most turnover occurring in the first two years. To retain millennials, the organizational socialization is an important process, which helps new employees to reduce anxiety and ambiguity. Previous research investigated different strategies facilitating successful new employees’ organizational socialization outcomes, including job satisfaction, job stress, organizational commitment, and intention to leave. However, there is limited research conducted on whether physical work environment can affect millennial new employees’ organizational socialization outcomes. This study used mixed methods to explore the preferences of millennials in the physical work environment and to examine the role of satisfaction with workplace design features in shaping millennial new employees’ organizational socialization long-term outcomes (job satisfaction, job stress, organizational commitment, turnover intention). The qualitative method used two online focus groups to generate eight themes about millennial new employees’ design preferences in the workplace. Based on the focus group results and literature review, this study developed a toolkit of 81 questions to measure the relationship between satisfaction with physical work environment features and organizational socialization outcomes. In total, 252 responses were collected for multiple regression analysis. The results indicate satisfaction with physical work environment features significantly predict millennial new employees’ organizational socialization long-term outcomes.

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