Backing up emergency teams in healthcare and law enforcement organizations: strategies to socialize newcomers in the time of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is putting significant pressure on emergency teams in healthcare and law enforcement organizations. In order to provide rapid backup, new workers must be socialized rapidly and effectively. In addition to considering the pros and cons of various newcomer socialization strategies and tools, healthcare and law enforcement organizations may need to design hybrid socialization strategies at the light of four essential processes of emergency teams: roles, knowledge, interpersonal relations and emotion management. We suggest that emergency teams based on the combined resources of old-timers and newcomers where the more experienced team members contribute actively to the socialization of new members can have unexpected positive effects on the team.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• organizational socialization
• emergency teams
• newcomers
• healthcare organizations
• law enforcement teams
• role crafting
• knowledge management
• swift trust
• emotions
• risk management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).