Buddy System

What the buddy system is

The buddy system (نظام الصديق المقرب), also called a buddy programme, is the assignment of a colleague from the team to a new employee during the new employee’s first weeks. The colleague answers the new employee’s everyday questions and introduces them to what is not written down in the documents.

Two people take part in the buddy system. One is the new employee, in the first weeks after joining. The other is the colleague assigned to that employee, who comes from the same team. This colleague is the buddy, assigned for the new employee’s first weeks, and the role covers that period.

The role of the buddy has two parts. One is answering the questions that come up for the new employee day by day while they settle into the work. The other is introducing the new employee to what the documents do not record: matters that the people in the team know, but that are not set down in writing.

What the buddy system provides that documents do not

A new employee has two kinds of question. Those of the first kind are put to the manager. Those of the second kind are not put to the manager, and it is the second kind that holds up the work without the cause of the delay becoming visible.

Questions of the second kind look like these:

• Who is actually responsible for this system? It asks who, in practice, looks after a system that the new employee has to work with.
• What is the right channel for this request? It asks by which route a particular request should be raised, so that the request reaches the person who deals with it.
• Is replying to messages after working hours the norm here? It asks what the team expects of the new employee once the working day is over.

Questions like these hold up the work, but the cause does not show. What can be seen is that the work is held up. What cannot be seen is the question behind the delay, which is still waiting for an answer.

A new employee may hold back from putting questions of this kind to the manager, for fear that they will seem trivial. The questions then remain unanswered: they are not asked, and so nobody answers them. The buddy system gives the new employee someone else to put them to: a colleague from the team whose role, during the first weeks, is to answer them.

What makes the buddy system work

The buddy system works when the arrangement meets the following conditions.

• The buddy is not the direct manager. It follows from the purpose of the arrangement, which is to give the new employee a source they can ask without the question counting towards any appraisal. Asking the direct manager can carry an appraisal with it. Asking the buddy carries none: a question put to the buddy remains a question, and no appraisal of the new employee follows from it.
• The buddy works outside the new employee’s shared tasks, where possible. It means choosing, wherever the team allows, a colleague whose tasks are not shared with the new employee. Priorities then conflict less, because the time the buddy gives to the new employee does not compete with tasks that the two of them carry out together.
• The role has a set duration. It lasts a limited number of weeks, with a short meeting each week, and it is not an open ended commitment. The buddy and the new employee both know that the role has an end, and that the meetings are short and come once a week until then.
• The role begins with a meeting fixed in the calendar. It gives the buddy system a start that does not depend on either person taking the first step. Leaving the start to initiative can mean that the buddy system never starts at all. With the first meeting already in the calendar, the buddy and the new employee meet without either of them having to suggest it.
• The time is counted in the buddy’s workload. It recognises the time the buddy gives to the role as part of the buddy’s work. The time then counts as work, not as something done on top of it. Otherwise the role turns into a burden that nobody acknowledges, and a burden that nobody acknowledges can end up neglected.
• The role is a choice, not an assignment. It is taken up by a colleague who wants it, and it is not handed to a colleague as a duty. An unwilling colleague is worse than having no buddy at all.

How the buddy system differs from mentoring

The buddy answers the question of how things work here. The buddy’s role is short, and it is limited to helping the new employee adjust. Mentoring (الإرشاد المهني) deals with another question, where the employee is heading in their career. Mentoring extends over months or years, and the mentor can be someone several levels more experienced than the person being mentored. The buddy system concerns the workplace that the new employee has just joined, while mentoring concerns the course of the employee’s career.

The buddy system is a practical part of employee onboarding. It is not a substitute for onboarding, and it is not a substitute for training on the tasks of the role either. Training on the tasks teaches the new employee how to do the work of the role, while the buddy’s role is limited to helping the new employee adjust. Onboarding and task training still have to take place, and the buddy system is one part of what happens alongside them in the new employee’s first weeks.

An organisation that relies on the buddy system in place of written onboarding has passed its responsibility to a colleague who performs the role voluntarily. Onboarding the new employee is the organisation’s responsibility, and relying on a buddy instead of written onboarding moves that responsibility onto a colleague whose role, under the conditions above, is a choice and not an assignment.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.