Best Practices for Remote Onboarding

Remote hiring is difficult, but remote onboarding can be even more challenging. Training a new employee virtually is not ideal for most businesses, especially if you’ve never had to plan and execute a remote onboarding process before. Challenges include a lack of in person communication, a lack of culture and personal connections, technical issues, and more.

Luckily, there are ways to combat the challenges of remote onboarding. As businesses everywhere are forced to transition their processes to a remote setting, make sure that you have an airtight remote onboarding process in place for your next hire. 

Virtual Onboarding Checklist

1. Organize Your Process 
2. Set Clear Expectations
3. Provide All Necessary Information
4. Meet Face-to-Face Frequently
5. Make Introductions 
6. Prioritize Culture 
7. Ask for Feedback 

Organize Your Process

Break down your onboarding process into steps so that you can efficiently organize the details of your process. If you had a well-defined onboarding process in place before the era of remote work, use this as a blueprint for your remote process. Keep an eye out for steps that are changed by the remote factor, and consider how you will adapt this process to a remote setting. 

Organizing your remote onboarding process into clear stages will make it easier to plan, implement, and assess how your virtual training works. Consider pre-first day steps like filling out paperwork, first week training and introductions, and continued training and check ins. Define the steps of your onboarding process from the start so that you can track how new employees move through the full process and acclimate to their new positions. 

Set Clear Expectations

Your new hire should already have a pretty clear idea of their position, its responsibilities, and what tasks they’ll be taking on from the interview and hiring process. Now that they’re starting the position, however, ensure that they clearly understand daily work requirements, communication standards, and set goals for them to meet in the short and long term. 

Defining expectations is important to help any new employee understand how to perform their job, but it’s especially useful for remote employees who spend most of their days working independently. 

Provide All Necessary Information

Put together a thorough welcome packet with all of the company information your new employee will need. Include your employee handbook, if you have one, as well as any other company policies employees should know about. You should also be sure that any paperwork is filled out and kept on file for both your HR department and for the employee themselves. 

You should also ensure that your new employee has access to any tools, shared drives, and so on. Set up their email accounts and other communication accounts like Zoom, Slack, or phone systems, and give them passwords to any tools or other dashboards they may need. 

Meet Face-to-Face Frequently

While you may not be able to meet in-person due to the pandemic, location, or time differences, try to meet virtually as often as possible. A video chat is better than a phone call or email, so try to set up regular virtual meetings during the onboarding process. This makes it easier to get to know your new employee. It also offers benefits like screen sharing, so you can show each other what you’re looking at to improve communication. 

Make Introductions

Introduce your new employee to their coworkers! Creating a sense of community is important for company culture and to make employees feel united. While a welcome and introduction email is standard for a new hire, go further than this when working with remote teams. Try to set up individual introductions, perhaps over video, and encourage your staff to reach out to the new employee to make them feel welcome. If remote employees will be working together on projects, make sure they are well acquainted and know who they can reach out to with what questions.

Prioritize Culture

Company culture is one of the most important aspects of a job for many workers today, but culture can get lost a bit when working remotely. Take action to ensure that you still have a strong company culture while working remotely. There are various ways to create and maintain a remote culture, so be sure to consider this for both new hires and your existing staff. 

Creating a positive culture will help your new hires feel more connected to your company and to their coworkers. Don’t underestimate the importance of culture, even for remote teams. 

Ask for Feedback 

Finally, ask for feedback and check in regularly with new hires. Ask what they liked about the onboarding and training process, what they disliked, and what they would change or what they wished they knew sooner. No one has a better perspective on your onboarding process than someone who went through it, so consider your freshly onboarded employees a useful asset to evaluate your process.  Take feedback and apply it to constantly improve remote onboarding. 

Final Thoughts

Onboarding sets the tone for your new employees work experience, and can make or break employee retention. Streamline your remote onboarding process to improve your new hire’s experience! For help with hiring, contact TalentFleX Solutions.