Remote Onboarding: A Guide for Human Resource Teams November 8, 2022

Create the space for your new colleagues to ask about the way things are done as well. As soon as a candidate accepts the job offer, find an opportunity to make them feel a part of the family. Reckitt, the global consumer products company, sends a care package to new employees’ homes before their start date.

A gelled team (or integrated team) operates as a collective unit where the output is more than the sum of each individual contribution. In the fast-paced creative industry, skills can become obsolete almost as quickly as they become trendy. Remote work offers an excellent opportunity for this as you have a plethora of online resources at your disposal.

How Do You Scale A Remote Onboarding Process?

According to Gallup, it might take up to a year for an employee to realize their full potential in a new role. To help new employees get acclimated to their new workplace, an onboarding program is offered. For an employer, this is a fantastic time of year to outline all of the characteristics that will assist new employees to flourish as they learn more about their position in the company. It’s to be expected that a remote workplace has different norms and culture as opposed to a typical in-office one. There’s more room for flexibility, which even though it is worth savoring, it can also impact the employers’ – and employees’ – ability to set clear expectations and boundaries. That’s why you should dedicate the first onboarding days to showing the culture and company norms to the new hires.

• Making a video that welcomes new employees to the company can be a great way to create an immediate sense of belonging as part of the team.
• You can help remote employees build strong one-on-one relationships through informal virtual meetings, including happy hours, team-building activities, and icebreakers.
• This is why your HR team must help new remote employees understand how their work responsibilities fit into the larger success of your company.
• It is especially helpful when buddies are from the same level of hierarchy within the organisation.
• It’s ideal to have a plan in place before beginning this procedure with your new hire.

At Miro, the company breaks the larger Zoom calls into small groups to help people get to know each other. They even recently had everyone in their Amsterdam office play a board game together virtually. A checklist can indicate visible progress and help new hires ensure they don’t miss out on any task. It’s also helpful to document and share information on work culture through videos, employee testimonials, or the “about us” section on your website or LinkedIn page. While this may seem like a no-brainer, remote access issues can be nerve-wracking for any employee on their first day.

BONUS TIP: Create a remote-friendly culture

Waiting until the last minute to do this will just make things more stressful and chaotic. An effective onboarding process starts before an employee ever logs on for their first day. Prior to their start date, take care of the important details that will make the onboarding process feel seamless.

• On this page, we’re detailing how to successfully onboard new hires in a remote environment.
• For all new GitLab hires, we have created an onboarding issue template that has tasks to complete each day.

Research from Glassdoor shows that organizations with strong onboarding practices improve employee retention by 82% and productivity by more than 70%. Yet, according to Gallup, only 12% of employees feel that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees — and this is under “normal” circumstances. After onboarding is complete, ask each employee to complete a survey and/or provide feedback on their onboarding experience.

Start Onboarding Your Remote Employees

Some companies set up a “shadow week” in which the new hire attends a wide variety of team and stakeholder group meetings, even those that may feel less directly relevant to that new hire’s core responsibilities. In a virtual setting, you can’t rely as much on the organic and spontaneous relationship-building that happens in hallways, over lunches, https://remotemode.net/blog/10-best-remote-onboarding-practices-to-adopt/ and at office events. That’s why it’s best to be proactive and intentional about setting up a mix of formal and informal one-on-one interactions between the new hire and other individuals. Additionally, it’s important to organize a mix of different group discussions so that the new hire can develop contextual understanding of team dynamics.

Bringing them into regular team meetings and onboarding them onto your instant communication tools will also give them easy access to others, to ask questions and build connections. Give new employees peace of mind by outlining a communication plan for their onboarding process, even if your human capital management (HCM) software can automatically trigger events. Include key tasks to be completed — such as filling out forms or participating in an informational session with the head of HR — and provide points of contact for each item. Additionally, designate a liaison to the finance and tech teams in case new hires have specific questions regarding their onboarding in each department. Creating a buddy system can increase employee productivity and satisfaction.

crucial steps to successful remote onboarding

It helps to maintain a work-life balance while ensuring that the team is on the same page. During your first week, you’ll likely find yourself in a whirlwind of virtual meetings—team introductions, project briefings, and perhaps even a virtual welcome party. These are not just protocol but an essential part of becoming part of the team.

This period is designed to keep the professional excited as they achieve greater independence and increase their productivity. They should be building social connections and finding their place within your organization and its culture. Visme makes it easier to create human resources materials that are informative and engaging. Create successful HR materials with our easy-to-use content creation platform. Recognizing the worth of a productive person through compensation can help firms in running more efficiently and successfully. Gaining a deeper understanding of employee salary and benefits will help your department provide more appropriate staff incentives.

This can be invaluable when adding additional content to an existing program or for any type of course that needs to push out fresh information or is time sensitive. Check this course for new hires for some inspiration on how this tool can be used. You can also consider creating this as an eLearning interactive, as with the iSpring Suite Max authoring toolkit. ISpring provides you with ready-made interactive templates, so to create one, you only need to fill the template with your text and images.