10 Remote Onboarding Best Practices You Should Follow In 2022

Instead of requiring them to take time out from their job to help your new employees, the answers are readily available in your knowledge base. Training new employees is essential for business success – no matter how experienced your new hire is, they still need help to learn the ropes in your company and attain full productivity. If you were in an office you would be engaging in the social side of onboarding, perhaps having lunch, coffee or attending happy hour with coworkers. When onboarding remotely, you want to focus on the social side of things as well. Being organized will go a long way toward success in remote onboarding. If you can have detailed outlines of everything you need to know and do that is helpful. A good way to accomplish this is with a shared document or task list that has set due dates for items.

“Create a structured calendar with separate links for each session,” she said. “Stress punctuality to internal colleagues tapped for presentations. This is not a meeting you can show up 10 minutes late for or cancel and expect to leave a good impression with the new employee.” A knowledge base is not only beneficial for your new employees but fosters internal collaboration among your seasoned pros. They will be encouraged to document their knowledge ready for use by coworkers instead of hoarding the knowledge in their heads. During your first week or two in your new role make sure you go over what goals you need to hit in your first 30, 60, and 90 days. You may have a plan for this already sketched out for you or you may be responsible for putting one together yourself. Either way, review the plan with your direct supervisor to make sure you are both on the same page.

How To Run A Successful Remote Team Meeting

With a larger population working remotely, there’s been a change in how companies onboard new employees. Lastly, it is important to ask your remote employees for feedback on the onboarding process. Ask them what went well and what they liked, and also what they think you could have improved on. Having gone through the process they will be the best equipped to give you constructive feedback. Their advice is vital to making your company’s future onboarding process as good and as effective as possible.

Instead, you should pair them with someone in the office so they can start to build relationships with people they may never meet in person. Now, more than ever, remote remote onboarding best practices employees have gone from being the exception to becoming a major part of the workforce. Onboarding plays a critical role in a new hire’s success and happiness.

Remote Onboarding Best Practices Every Hr Team Should Know

The process, which typically takes about one hour, happens as part of a one-on-one phone session provided for every new hire. ​Most organizations have transitioned to remote work in response to the coronavirus pandemic, making completely virtual onboarding of new hires a necessity. But providing a superb onboarding experience virtually can be a challenge for employers doing it for the first time. Or proactively reach out to set up virtual coffees with your direct coworkers. Just as you would when getting to know any new person make sure to pay full attention to the conversation and come prepared with topics of conversation. With traditional, in-person roles you typically spend your first day or week being assigned any supplies, filling out the necessary paperwork and so on. With remote onboarding, you will most likely get any necessary supplies mailed to you, or you will be provided with instructions on how to pick them up.

A FinanceBuzz survey of remote workers finds 46% experience feelings of isolation. Video messages from the C-suite and peers establish a connection well before the new employee officially joins the organization. That’s why EQRx, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company, sends video messages to team members as part of its preboarding program. New hires receive messages from EQRx executives and future colleagues welcoming them to the team. On the employer review site Comparably, 100% of employees say they had a positive onboarding experience at EQRx. As soon as new employees receive a job offer, they should also receive access to your company’s online onboarding portal.

To help your new members fit in, provide them with valuable information about the company. Let them know about your company’s vision, mission, goals and values. Outline the products and services you provide and orient them regarding your customers and competitors. Since there’s no way to set up team lunch outings and welcome drinks, you need to look for another way to introduce your new hires to their co-workers. The easiest way is to organize video calls both with the entire team and individually with the colleagues they will communicate with most often. It is important to remember that while both on and off-site employees can form part of the same team, they do not all share the same experience of working for a particular organization.

Reinforce Company Culture

It’s no secret that a great onboarding process forms a healthy foundation to build relationships with new employees. Using an onboarding software designed for remote implementation ensures that things are encrypted and protected from unauthorized access. Many software companies also keep extensive data logs so you can determine if someone accessed something they weren’t supposed to. The goal of using remote tools is to ensure seamless communication and collaboration. They need to keep your employees connected, no matter their geographical locations. When onboarding new hires, you can’t afford missed opportunities, miscommunication, and stalled progress due to issues with work tools.

When it comes to planning out employee onboarding, there are many steps and details to consider. To help facilitate the process, it is useful to have an onboarding checklist of all the things you need to include from start to finish. We’ve highlighted some of the most indispensable elements to successfully onboard remote employees.

#4 The First Weeks

You also need to educate your employees on how to keep their credentials and other important data safe to avoid data breaches. Make sure that they have access to the benefits that on-site employees have, for example, if your company offers subsidized gym memberships to employees you can extend that benefit to remote employees as well. This is especially helpful in the case of remote employees when working away from the office can often lead to a feeling of isolation. If you are unable to onboard in groups, then consider inviting all new employees who have started in the past 3 months to a group session. Discover the best remote onboarding practices to ensure smooth transitions for both the employee and employer – whether you’re a remote-first company or are temporarily operating remotely due to the pandemic.

• There’s a great deal of personal employee data that’s collected during the onboarding process.
• ​Most organizations have transitioned to remote work in response to the coronavirus pandemic, making completely virtual onboarding of new hires a necessity.
• You also need to make sure that the new hire has received the company code of conduct, employee handbooks, annual leave and sickness policies and grievance procedures etc.
• For the first 30 days , encourage managers to compensate for the lack of in-office and after-work hangouts by regularly touching base with to new hires.
• The best thing you can do is share the schedule before they start to feel fully prepared for what their first week will look like.
• Therefore, nailing the remote onboarding process is not so much a need, but a necessity.

Taking the time to select the best remote onboarding software will help you and your employees for years to come. It isn’t easy to move from traditional onboarding to virtual onboarding. If you know you’ll struggle https://remotemode.net/ with this, look for an onboarding solution with excellent customer service and easy implementation. Time and technical knowledge shouldn’t be a barrier to get you and your business where you need to go.

Personalise Onboarding Even From A Distance

A mentor acts as the person a new hire can reach out to when they need support, as well as the person who can introduce them into your workplace culture. This will help make sure you keep and strengthen your company culture, even with the increased number of remote workers.

Some typical essentials include a computer, printer, desk, office chair, office supplies, phone, reliable internet connection, and dedicated working space. These actions make it easy to integrate them into the company as seamless as possible. Finally, we recommend partnering up one employee with your new hire using the buddy system. This one person will be their designated, go-to employee to “show them the ropes” and be there if they get stuck. They’ll feel less confused about where to ask for help and more comfortable knowing they always have someone to talk to. Assign these tasks in your PM software and have them check-in via your preferred messaging protocol.

Easy access to the right tools will ensure new hires stay on track with their training and tasks. This helps to ensure productivity is not lost, and it also maximizes output and increases results. Most importantly, remote tools allow for proper management of new hires by the in-house teams. Employee check-ins are essential for remote workers, so it’s necessary to have a strategy that supports that. For example, you can schedule one-on-one conversations via video call to assess each new hire’s progress and performance.

If you choose to include milestones as part of your onboarding process, make sure that each milestone is about the same size and difficulty. It can defeat the entire process of using milestones if one module is significantly longer or harder than the rest. “We are in constant mode of reiterating and testing new ways of making the onboarding experience a fruitful one for our employees,” she said. Don’t assume that your current managers know how to onboard using remote tools. Invest in training from HR to ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them.

For examples, do they have a dedicated workspace at home or will they need to rent a desk at a co-working space? Are they using the same operating system as your teammates or do you need to provide them with a work laptop? You might even consider getting them a second monitor to boost productivity.

Why Remote Employee Onboarding Is Vital

If your work is not remote by design, ongoing remote work for teams with a high growth mentality usually exacerbates the onboarding challenges. If so, you have the opportunity to set them up with a plan that will help them grow in their role and eventually take on more responsibility. This will help them feel invested in the company and build a stronger relationship with you as their manager. Ensure the new hire has all the equipment, materials, accounts, and access they need to do their job effectively. Establishing this kind of normalcy early on helps new hires feel like part of the team. Employee onboarding integrates a new employee with a company and its culture and gives the new hire the tools and information needed to become a productive team member.

Break Down Your Training With Milestones

It’s easy for remote employees to get caught up in constant overtime to accommodate different time zones and schedules, and managers raising the baseline expectations because everyone is at home anyway. This is even harder for new hires, who are not familiar with the pre-remote company culture and feel they need to prove themselves. 48% of developers looked for a new job because they wanted better work-life balance, according to the 2020 Stack Overflow survey. So encourage breaks, boundaries, working out and talking about mental health. The best onboarding program can make the difference, ensuring that newcomers are updated on internal company processes and procedures. This can be especially important for remote teams, as it also helps build team cohesion and camaraderie before they meet in person for the first time.

A time tracking software like HiveDesk can facilitate the onboarding process by automatically logging employee activity, screenshots, and more. Managers can then use this information to provide feedback and ensure that new employees are getting up to speed on company processes and standards. Consider using video conferencing tools like Google Hangouts or Skype during the first week of onboarding to introduce the new hire to their team. This is also a great opportunity for managers to answer any questions or help with any issues that arise during the first few days of work. One of the key differences between remote and in-person onboarding is visibility. Meaning that, for extended periods of time, a new employee may find themselves alone in their role. What this could mean is that you may want to design a remote onboarding process that stretches over a longer period of time.