Practical and Strategic tips for onboarding remote employees
What’s the best way to adapt new employees to their company’s culture?
More than likely, an effective onboarding strategy is a practical tool to familiarise new team members within their workspaces.
How to onboard remote employees?
An effective onboarding strategy needs to familiarise new employees with a company’s economic, social and technological climate. Therefore, it is critical to:
Define and establish S.M.A.R.T goals
Every onboarding program needs to have a specific objective relating to the employee’s position. For example, an Administration Clerk requires a different onboarding, compared to a new Finance Manager.
The goals of an onboarding program ought to be measurable to track progress the employee is making. Finally, remote employees should have achievable, realistic and timely goals that can be reasonably accomplished within a specific timeframe.
Set up the relevant technology
Technology acts as the bridge between remote employees, the organisation, their superiors and customers. Technology connects these stakeholder groups and allows for productivity to be maintained.
As such, it is important when developing a remote onboarding program, that the appropriate technology – electronic devices, communication platforms, (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack Etc.), relevant company software, network configuration, infrastructure, firewall, digital connectivity as well as technical support are readily available.
Assign a mentor
An effective onboarding strategy needs to have a mentor liaison between remote workers and the company. This liaison must thoroughly understand the goals of onboarding, the vision of the company, the roles each team member performs and how these roles fit into the overall mission of the organisation. Mentors can be HR professionals, experienced colleagues or a contracted consultant.
Share a welcome pack
Welcome packs usually include company merchandise – mugs, lanyards, key chains and stationery as well as useful company information. Company history and organisational structure information helps to further acquaint recruits with the company. Welcome packs can be distributed via post or company courier.
Arrange an in-person meeting
You can also arrange for remote workers to come in office, provided it is feasible and all safety protocols are observed to collect their welcome packs. In-person meetings also provide a physical, interactive benefit to the working relationship. Seeing new employees in person fosters a sense of familiarity and starts the relationship in a positive way.
Help remote employees to complete paperwork
Be a support system by assisting with paperwork. Therefore, you want to ensure the information they’re providing is legitimate, accurate and relevant. Your paperwork assistance inevitably benefits both parties.
Encourage team building
Remote employees should virtually meet everyone, or at least the key persons in their department. Having sufficient meetings with their superiors and being present in virtual meetings enables them to experience the work process. This experience forges strong working communication and builds collaboration, trust and teamwork.
Get them up to speed on your company’s culture
New hires should be actively encouraged to contribute ideas and input towards important projects as a way of including and bringing them up to speed as to what the company is presently working on.
Ensure new hires know how to use company’s communication tools
As a remote worker, it is essential that new hires understand online streaming tools, video conferencing software, virtual workspace and social media to communicate with the team and perform the required responsibilities.
Assign role specific training
Employees bring their qualifications and transferable skills, however, depending on their role, they may require specific training in a certain software, work policies or procedures, to work and engage on the same level as their colleagues.
Schedule calls to touch base
Regular calls with mentors facilitate foundational support. Scheduled calls provide remote employees with a platform to provide feedback in terms of challenges they’re experiencing or ask further questions about their role and environment.
Encourage virtual team bonding
Regular communication also helps foster a great sense of team bonding and trust on the part of the new employee.
Remote on-boarding FAQs
The Covid-19 pandemic made remote work widespread and necessary. Companies may not have been adequately prepared for this widespread technological change. Therefore, certain concerns may have arisen, including:
How can a company adopt a virtual onboarding approach when it is not tech-savvy or/and doesn’t embody a learning culture?
In a post-pandemic work environment, adapting to change has become a valuable skill. Therefore, companies that lack adaptive skills and technological infrastructure to conduct remote onboarding should enlist external services.
A consultant specialising in Human Resources or technology, can be a valuable resource to companies who lack the technical expertise. Such a resource can assist in analysing the company’s capabilities, identifying the appropriate software, implementing the technological infrastructure within the company’s existing framework and training team members on proper and effective use of this new infrastructure.
Do you conduct ‘culture trainings’ to communicate what culture looks like at your organisation? If so, what do these look like?
Companies engage in cultural trainings to strengthen and preserve stakeholder relationships. These sessions are highly interactive and deliver strategic content through storytelling, role play, training courses, seminars, ‘lunch n’ learn’ talks and job rotation. These activities expose employees to different perspectives, multiple ideal and innovative solutions.
Software for remote onboarding
Prominent types of software necessary for a remote onboarding program include:
Communicative platforms
Without video conferencing platforms, remote onboarding would not even be a possibility. These tools are effective when achieving helping remote employees completing HR paperwork, setting up meetings with team members, encouraging team building, bringing them up to speed on company’s culture as well as arranging trainings and team bonding.
Knowledge platforms
Knowledge based platforms such as ProProfs Knowledge Base is an online resource that acts as a handbook for new hires. Company policies, work dynamics, procedures and other important information can be uploaded and accessed by new employees remotely on any device. Additionally, this software also incorporates Google search engine capabilities, workflow customising options and Microsoft Office features to simplify work procedures and maintain an organised knowledge base.
Chatbots
Chatbots software combines both knowledge and communicative tools that utilise artificial intelligence that allows remote workers to ask questions, conduct conversations and access relevant solutions.
HR Cloud Onboard
Also termed Digital HR, this software automates and simplifies workload management and the entire remote onboarding process. This software is suitable for effective workflow management, where work tasks and paperwork are automated, deadlines are appropriately assigned and progress is monitored and tracked.
This allows remote employees to manage their workload without a need for constant queries or micromanagement.
