More Than a Wolcome: the positive Impact of Structure Onboarding on Newcomer integration :An Insider Case Study in the Algerian Pharmaceutical Sector

摘要

Purpose This study examines how a structured onboarding and training system, combined with university partnerships, shapes talent attraction, integration, and retention within a highly regulated industrial context in an emerging economy. 

Design/methodology/approach Adopting an interpretivist, insider case study design, the study draws on the perspective of the training manager who conceived and led the implementation of a two-year onboarding system (2021–2022) within a pharmaceutical company in Oran, Algeria. Data comprise 22 semi-structured interviews across three stakeholder groups (new recruits, experienced employees, academic partners), internal documentary evidence (HR audit reports, training materials), and direct observation, analyzed through Braun and Clarke's (2022) thematic analysis and interpreted through an Insider Action Research lens. 

Findings The onboarding system operated effectively on dimensions within its direct influencesocial integration, role clarity, and early organizational attachment  with recruits' engagement further amplified by a sense of participating in a period of significant organizational transformation. However, a documented pre-intervention turnover rate of approximately 60%, linked to compensation, contract precarity, and managerial treatment, indicates that onboarding alone could not resolve retention challenges rooted in structural HR conditions. University partnerships emerged as reciprocally motivated, serving academic institutions' own visibility objectives alongside firms' recruitment needs. 

Originality/value This study contributes to onboarding research by demonstrating ho structured onboarding supports positive newcomer integration and early organizational attachment, while also identifying the organizational and structural conditions that limit its capacity to influence longer-term retention. It further extends onboarding theory by identifying organizational momentum as a contextual amplifier of onboarding effectiveness and by empirically clarifying the boundary between onboarding's influence and structural turnover antecedents in an underexplored emerging-economy context. 

Practical implications HR practitioners in regulated, high-turnover industries should pursue structured onboarding as a genuine driver of integration, while explicitly pairing it with parallel investment in compensation, contractual security, and career development.