Remote Work Onboarding Solutions

Over the past couple of years, the number of employees working remotely has grown tenfold during the pandemic. This means that more and more recruiters have to search and onboard employees 100% online.

New realities require a revision of the old approaches that were used in the process of onboarding employees offline because they’re no more effective. It is becoming much more difficult to properly adapt employees, and poor-quality adaptation hurts the business.

Today we will tell you which remote work onboarding solutions work most efficiently today based on the best onboarding examples.

Pre-onboarding can be more important than onboarding

The new employee should feel at ease from the start. As a result, as soon as the candidate accepts the offer, take care of the workplace. On the first working day, a person must sit at a computer with all of the set programs.

Just imagine: on the first day of work, you receive SMS with access to work mail. When you open the inbox, you find a welcome note indicating the required access, contact information for colleagues, connections to resources, and a work plan for the trial time.

Thus, the employee will have the impression that they were waited for. And this is correct, so it is critical to create all of the necessary conditions. The organization will only profit from this: the more at ease a person is in a new environment, the sooner they will begin to show their true colors.

What should be prepared?

Drawing up an individual adaptation plan

This is an important stage of adaptation, which can go beyond the trial period. Thus, each employee, together with the immediate supervisor, creates a personal "roadmap" of development based either on the needs of the project or on the desire to develop in specific areas.

Provide your new team members with a detailed breakdown of their onboarding process. What meetings are they going to hold each day? Who are they going to meet with? What is the goal of each Zoom call?

Make a meeting schedule for them on their Microsoft Teams calendar. This can help them stay focused and lessen the tension of worrying that they will miss something important.

An individual adaptation plan helps to understand the prospects of the employee in the company. It may also include courses, recommended articles, and books, curators, etc.

Such a plan will allow you to be in control of the situation and respond on time if the employee needs help.

Meeting the team

On the first working day, it is worth introducing a new colleague to the whole company. This can be done in the form of mailing or posts in corporate chats in Slack or Telegram.

In this letter/post, briefly tell about the role and tasks of the new employee, add a block about expertise and knowledge, as well as a photo. This information helps to get a first idea of ​​the new employee.

Given the lack of the possibility of small talk with a coffee machine in the office, it is also important to talk not only about professional competencies but also about the person's personal characteristics (hobbies and everything that, in the opinion of the employee, is important to know about them). This allows you to quickly find like-minded people.

Set up regular feedback

Arrange short calls with newcomers at the end of the working week to quickly solve emerging difficulties and not miss a sudden change in the mood of a promising candidate in relation to working in your company.

If you have reason to believe that new hires are uncomfortable talking about difficulties in a face-to-face format, keep in mind surveys as a feedback-gathering tool or solutions for remote customer service.

Arrange a meeting with company leaders every two to three months. At this meeting, each employee can directly ask absolutely any question to the manager and get a sincere and detailed answer.

The atmosphere of openness in the company is important: the employee should feel that they can easily communicate with any person on any occasion, all issues can be discussed openly, and there are no pitfalls.

Create a handbook for new hires

Collect materials for staff onboarding in one place: in a special folder on a shared drive or a topic on the corporate portal. Let it be available to the employee at any time.

The easiest and fastest way to create a single text document. But information is better perceived in the form of visual diagrams, short videos, and small texts. Gradually move from long and monotonous written instructions to more interactive formats.

Let your database, in addition to the names and photos of employees, have presentations on the organizational structure of the company and a description of the main business processes.

Tell employees about the company mission and goals. Share success stories and videos from conferences and corporate events. A virtual gallery of fame is a great way to show how you value your employees and where they each play a key role.

Include a newcomer in informal communication channels

Online "Mafia", virtual charades, chat rooms of interest, online masterminds, and other informal activities help fill the lack of live communication not only for current employees but also for new team members.

90% of employees say they work more efficiently by using gamification in their workflows. And 69% plan to stay with the company for a long time if it uses non-standard methods of increasing motivation.

Final words

Today, over the period of remote work, more and more people are joining companies. Almost all HR solutions and adaptation tools went online along with remote work. The most important thing is to make it clear to the newbie that they are not alone. Therefore, when working outside the office, it is especially important to take care of them and try to increase the number of contacts with colleagues.