Remote onboarding best practices

3. Introduce new hires to the team

New employees need to feel at home when they join you. Most importantly, other employees need to know them, especially when joining different departments and teams. This is crucial to ensure productivity for your remote teams.If you have an office, you can invite new hires to spend their first week at your office with your in-house team. This is crucial in facilitating training, and it also introduces them to your company culture.

Encourage them to schedule video calls to know as many employees as possible, particularly those they’ll be working with every day. A tool like Zoom lets you have breakout groups of three or four to encourage new hires to know each other. Also, Microsoft Teams allows you to add new hires to teams to promote interaction and participation.

You can also schedule virtual coffee breaks and lunches. These actions make it easy to integrate them into the company as seamless as possible.

4. Make virtual training easy

With virtual training for new remote hires, you should go beyond your regular training

and HR departments. Your existing employees have experience and expertise in your internal processes. As such, they are in a good position to share useful tips through videos and webinars with new hires.For best practices in remote onboarding, be sure to incorporate live webinar training sessions to get their questions answered in real-time. Make the training as friendly as possible. One way you can do this is by breaking training into steps. It can be overwhelming for new hires to complete all the training at once.

After each step, you can assign them a series of activities to complete to assess their comprehension of the subject/task. At advanced stages of the training program, give them real work with short deadlines while providing feedback.

It’s essential to point out mistakes during training and show the correct methods, strategies, or techniques they should use. If possible, you can offer the training via a remote training software that monitors their progress and provides scores once training is completed.

5. Organize group gathering

If circumstances permit, invite your remote hires for a group gathering at your office. This is vital as it helps them identify the individuals they should add to their internal networks for effective remote working.

Keep in mind, disconnection and isolation are some of the key challenges that new remote hires experience. Therefore, a comprehensive and successful remote onboarding plan should include measures for addressing such issues to create a sense of belonging and integration in new hires.

Having at least one group gathering can be quite empowering and motivating. The meet-up doesn’t need to occur at your office. Of course, some employees work from distant locations, so they might not make it to the meeting. They can use video calls to join the meeting.

6. Build an engaging virtual culture in your remote onboarding best practices plan

Group dynamics can break or make your remote team, just like in a typical office environment. As such, building a virtual culture is key to ensuring the right values, behaviors, and beliefs among your new hires.

For best practices in remote onboarding specifically, here are the steps you can take to develop the right culture:

Provide all the essentials for remote work

You need to ensure new hires have everything they need to complete their work. Some typical essentials include a computer, printer, desk, office chair, office supplies, phone, reliable internet connection, and dedicated working space.

While it might not be possible to provide all these essentials, you have to ensure they have access to the necessary tools for completing their work effectively.

Create guidelines, policies, and expectations

It’s vital to have policies on deadlines and time-off requests. They need to understand how to reach out to management whenever anything comes up or need help. Most importantly, you must provide a contact person for every scenario.

Your policies should also be clear about work hours. Are you flexible, or do you expect them to work fixed hours? Be sure to make this information accessible within the tools you’re using for work. For example, if you have a web content management system or company intranet, remember to set up a resource center for hosting such information.

Build a culture statement

If you already have an in-house culture statement, you can still use it for your remote team with just a few updates. You’ll have to eliminate phrases and terminologies related to physical spaces, such as office pets and game rooms.

If you don’t have one, you can still create the statement. List down the interests and values you expect from employees and explain how the company supports those values. Like other employee resources, you should also ensure the statement is accessible to remote teams.

7. Provide a virtual mentor

Cultivating a virtual connection with new hires is essential for them to integrate easily with the rest of the team. Remote employees tend to miss meaningful collaborative and social opportunities that are integral in ensuring productivity and engagement.Providing a virtual mentor for new remote hires helps to give them a head start. While mentoring remote workers is somewhat different, it helps deliver positive and powerful effects for new employees. This helps to improve the morale and motivation of your team.

For new hires, the first few weeks of joining a new company can be a period of uncertainty and anxiety. As such, having a dedicated person to hold their hands through every stage makes them comfortable and familiar with their new work environment.

The process of mentoring new hires should embrace understanding, flexibility, and patience. Keep in mind that every employee has unique experiences and abilities.

8. Remote onboarding best practices – check-in regularly

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.As an HR manager, regular check-ins are essential to know the issues that employees are experiencing and what they’re working on. You have to help them solve problems as they occur without waiting for quarterly or annual performance reviews.

Apart from video calls, you can set up a questionnaire, which they can complete and submit to the HR department. You can then follow up with a video chat for clarification and to address specific concerns. Here are some useful tips for conducting employee check-ins:

• Always have a fixed agenda
• Plan accordingly to attain the desired results
• Make it periodical
• Focus on development and performance

Effective HR managers use check-ins to understand how new hires are progressing, what’s working for them, and what needs to be changed.

9. Onboard new hires in groups

It’s easier to manage new hires remotely when you onboard them in groups. If you’re using a company intranet, setting up a category or tag for new hires lets you introduce them to the right resources and training at once. This allows them to make progress as a group.If you are hiring a large group of employees, you can onboard them in batches weekly or monthly for simple management. Be sure to create a welcome statement or document that guides and orients them. This saves you time in scheduling video conferences for every batch.

As a best practice, group onboarding allows new hires to know each other quickly. Additionally, it’s less agitating than one-on-one encounters, which some employees might not be comfortable with. If you can’t onboard in groups, you can schedule a conference or group session and invite all employees who joined you in the past three months.

Use the group sessions to introduce them to other employees as well as provide your work structure and methods of communication.

10. Provide easy access to tools

It can be frustrating and demotivating for new hires to struggle to access the necessary tools for work and communication. For example, if you’re using productivity tools, such as Slack, Trello, and Google Drive, you need to ensure they have the correct login details or user accounts.

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.

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.

Remote onboarding best practices FAQ

Here are the common questions that HR managers usually ask:

What is a good onboarding process?

As expected, new hires usually have much to take in during their first days. Lack of familiarity with your systems and processes can make them anxious. A good onboarding process makes new employees feel welcome and brings them up to speed on company procedures, policy, and culture.

The process should help them quickly adjust to the performance and social aspects of the job to become productive members of your organization. It’s advisable to avoid a “sink or swim” approach for new hires. Instead, create a guided process that takes into account every aspect of the job and company.

What are remote onboarding activities?

There are several remote onboarding activities that managers should complete to make the process as simple as possible for new hires. These include:

• Sending them work materials and IT manuals
• Mailing them company swag
• Helping them complete HR onboarding paperwork
• Providing them access to company tools
• Setting up virtual meetings with new hires and other key employees
• Arranging training

You should aim to complete most of these activities within the first two weeks of the onboarding process.

How long should remote onboarding take?

Remote onboarding can last from a few weeks to 6 months, depending on the nature of the job and experience of the new hire. For Remote onboarding best practices, most companies usually aim to complete the initial training within two weeks, bringing an end to the process.

Some researchers recommend extending the onboarding process to at least a year. They argue that this can improve employee retention and make new hires feel more comfortable and valued. The duration of onboarding depends on the complexity of the role, and that should guide you on setting the right period for your company and new hires.

What do new hires want from onboarding?

During the onboarding process, new hires prefer interactive onboarding groups and informative intro meetings. They also want comprehensive training on the work they’re going to do. New hires also wish to have as many basic tasks as they can handle to understand the processes involved in real work.

How so you make onboarding fun for new hires?

You can make their first day fun and memorable through different creative activities. For example, your in-house team can wear t-shirts with the message “Welcome” during the first video conference. Give them time to go through your materials and get familiar with your processes. You can also mail them your company swag.

Final thoughts about remote onboarding best practices

Creating a great onboarding experience isn’t an easy process, particularly when you have new hires for different job roles. Regardless, you need to focus on providing a seamless process for your employees. Companies with an effective remote onboarding best practices plan are likely to increase revenue growth and profit margin by 2.5 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.

In place for a physical work environment, you can use fun team meetings and video calls to welcome new hires. Be sure to list out the steps new hires need to take to complete the process to ensure they don’t get confused along the way. Also, strive to create informal moments to ensure employees don’t feel isolated.

Most importantly, you need to provide them with the channels for asking questions or finding the information they need. If they’re located in a different time zone, they need to know the best possible time to reach out to you for assistance.

Bear in mind that a virtual onboarding plan isn’t a one-time thing. You need to regularly review and update the process while taking your employees’ feedback into account.