Van Gennep's (1909/1960) foundational work on rites of passage, developed from cross-cultural anthropological observation of significant life transitions, identified a recurring three-phase structure: separation, the departure from a prior state and its associated identity and relationships; a liminal phase, an in-between period lacking the stability of either the prior or the new state, often experienced as disorienting precisely because it belongs fully to neither; and reincorporation, arrival at and integration into a new, stable state with its own identity and relationships. His research found this structure recurring across genuinely diverse cultural transition rituals, suggesting it reflects something general about how humans psychologically navigate significant transition rather than a pattern specific to any single cultural context.
Bridges's (2009) extension of this structure into organizational contexts, terming the three phases ending, neutral zone, and new beginning, argued that the same underlying psychological structure applies whether the transition in question is experienced by an individual entering a new organizational context or by a collective organization moving through significant change, because both involve the same fundamental psychological demand: departing a known, stable state, navigating a period lacking the stability of either the old or new state, and arriving at and integrating into a new stable state. This is the direct basis for treating onboarding and change leadership as structurally related problems rather than as separate organizational challenges requiring entirely distinct frameworks.
Applying this structure to onboarding specifically, the ending phase corresponds to a new hire's departure from their prior professional identity and relationships, the neutral zone corresponds to the disorienting period after formal onboarding content has been delivered but before the new hire has genuinely integrated into their new role and relationships, and the new beginning corresponds to genuine integration and stable functioning within the new organizational context. Applying the same structure to organizational change, the ending phase corresponds to the organization's departure from its prior way of operating, the neutral zone corresponds to the period after a change has been announced and initiated but before new processes and relationships have genuinely stabilized, and the new beginning corresponds to the change becoming the organization's new stable operating reality.
Bridges's research identified the neutral zone specifically as the phase most commonly under-designed in both individual and organizational transition management, precisely because it lacks the clear, actionable structure of the ending, which can be marked with a defined event, or the new beginning, which can be celebrated once genuinely reached. Organizations designing onboarding programs concentrated heavily on the initial ending phase, orientation, first-day activities, and the eventual new-beginning phase, full integration and productivity, while under-designing support for the disorienting neutral-zone period between them, are repeating precisely the pattern Bridges identified as the most common failure mode in organizational change management applied to individual onboarding specifically.
The neutral zone, whether experienced by an individual new hire or a collective organization, carries specific psychological demands distinct from either the ending or new-beginning phases: genuine ambiguity about identity and expectations, since the old identity and relationships have been departed from but the new ones are not yet fully established, and a corresponding vulnerability to anxiety, disengagement, or premature reversion to old patterns that the clearer structure of the ending and new-beginning phases does not produce to the same degree. An individual new hire in this phase, having completed formal onboarding but not yet feeling genuinely integrated, and an organization in this phase, having initiated a change but not yet reached new stable operating patterns, are experiencing structurally similar psychological demands even though the scale and specific content of what they are navigating differ substantially.
This structural similarity has a direct practical implication: interventions found effective for organizational neutral-zone support, deliberate, sustained communication acknowledging the ambiguity rather than treating it as resolved once the change is formally announced, and explicit interim structures providing some stability before the new stable state is fully reached, should transfer meaningfully to individual onboarding's neutral zone, deliberate, sustained manager and peer engagement acknowledging that genuine integration takes longer than the formal onboarding period, and explicit interim support structures rather than treating the new hire as fully integrated once formal onboarding content has been delivered.
Organizations applying this shared structure should extend deliberate support specifically into the neutral-zone period for both individual onboarding and organizational change, rather than concentrating investment in the more clearly defined ending and new-beginning phases as most current practice does. For onboarding, this means structured check-ins and support extending well past the formal onboarding period's conclusion, into the specific window where a new hire has completed formal content but has not yet achieved genuine integration. For organizational change, this means sustained communication and interim structure extending well past the initial change announcement, into the specific window where old processes have been departed from but new ones have not yet stabilized.
The structural parallel this brief has developed should not be pushed further than the underlying theory actually supports: individual and organizational transitions share a psychological structure, but they differ in scale, reversibility, and the number of people whose experience must be managed simultaneously, differences with real practical consequences the shared structure alone does not resolve. An organizational change affects many individuals simultaneously, each potentially at a different phase of their own personal adjustment to the collective change, a coordination complexity individual onboarding does not face in the same way, since onboarding typically concerns a single individual's transition managed largely independently of others' transitions.
Organizations applying the transition framework this brief has described should recognize that organizational change management requires this additional coordination layer, managing a population potentially at different phases simultaneously, that individual onboarding support does not require to the same degree, even though the underlying phase structure and the specific risk of under-designing the neutral zone transfers meaningfully across both contexts. The shared structure justifies drawing on change management research to improve onboarding design, and vice versa, without implying the two are identical in every practical respect the difference in scale actually produces.
The evidence and theory this brief has reviewed identifies onboarding and organizational change leadership as sharing a common underlying psychological structure, Van Gennep's three-phase transition pattern and Bridges's organizational extension of it, with the neutral zone, the disorienting middle period between departure from an old state and arrival at a new one, consistently the phase most commonly under-designed in both individual and organizational contexts. Organizations that extend deliberate support specifically into this middle period, for new hires well past formal onboarding's conclusion and for organizations well past a change's initial announcement, are applying a shared, well-evidenced structural insight to two organizational challenges more commonly treated as entirely separate, and are addressing the specific phase both individual and organizational transition research identifies as the one most commonly left unsupported by current practice.