The best way to onboard new employees remotely

Welcoming new starters remotely poses different challenges than face-to-face inductions. Take a look at these remote onboarding tips from expert consultant Dr Maggi Evans.

Remote onboarding: Key insights

A positive onboarding experience allows new starters to feel a sense of belonging and help them to contribute to the team. These goals are the same for both remote and in-person onboardings but the remote setting requires a somewhat of a different approach.

There are five key considerations every employer or hiring manager should take into account when onboarding new team members virtually:

• Get to know the new employee to build a strong working relationship
• Introduce them to other team members over video calls
• Conduct a formal orientation to help them to understand the fundamentals of the organisation from structure to culture
• Nominate a buddy to act as a point of contact for quick questions
• Don’t overlook the management basics like setting expectations and checking in on your new team member

Find out additional detail and insight on successful remote onboarding below.

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Remote onboarding: Background

All around the world, leaders and managers started to welcome new starters to their teams remotely after the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. As remote work and hybrid teams have remained popular, employers everywhere are still met with the challenges of the remote onboarding process.

Why a positive remote onboarding experience is important

If we think about onboarding as the first few months in a role, it’s critically important. Done well, employee onboarding helps the person to hit the ground running and to want to stay. Great virtual onboarding plan achieves two core things:

1. Belonging

Effective onboarding should make the new employee feel as if they are a part of things and not just sitting on the sidelines. Let them know ‘who is who’ so that they can start to build relationships and feel that this is a place where they can enjoy their work. A sense of belonging will help them feel that they made the right decision to join.

2. Contribution

The second thing a great onboarding should achieve is that the new team member gains knowledge and understanding, and starts to contribute. Their contribution adds value to the rest of the team or the organisation. This contribution can be in the form of completing tasks, sharing thoughts and shaping how they can increase their contribution going forward.

Five ways to onboard your remote employees well

The two onboarding goals explained above are the same regardless of the working arrangements of your team. Your team might be a fully office-based team, totally remote, geographically dispersed or a hybrid of any of these.

The difference is that when people aren’t physically working together, you have to be much more proactive. You have to consciously make sure that you’re doing everything right, because you won’t be having the same mini-check-ins as you grab a coffee, pass their desk and so on.

So, here are five actions you can take to achieve these goals:

1. Get to know them

Spend time getting to know your new starter and ask what they want from their onboarding. Find out what they think will be challenging about the remote arrangements. Be willing to share your experiences too. The onboarding is about building a strong, trusting working relationship, it’s not a second part of the interview!

2. Make introductions

Help your new remote starter to build relationships with the team and the wider organisation. Set up calls to introduce them to people and involve them straight away in any team activities such as quizzes and communication calls. These actions will help them to integrate into the team.

Just make sure to prioritise the people the new starter needs to work with the most. If they meet 50 people in the first week, they probably won’t remember many of them!

3. Conduct a formal orientation

Often the first half day of an induction helps the new team member to understand some of the fundamentals. These basics include how the email works, the company’s purpose and mission as well as the organisational structure, compliance and company culture. Additionally, it’s important to cover who the key customers are, information on products and company processes.

Remember to put the orientation in the diary as an initial briefing. Make it easy for the person to review the information, for example, by saving all core documents in a file that they can easily find.

4. Set up a knowledge buddy

One thing that’s difficult about starting a new job is that you don’t know how things are done. Yes, it might be written up in processes and documents, it might be covered in the formal orientation, but there’s lots of little stuff that no one thinks to tell you. Mostly we find these things out by asking other people. That’s the quickest way to find out how things are really done, not how they’re meant to be done!

In an office, it’s easy for the new starter to informally ask people how to book a meeting room or where the shared documents are stored. In a more remote environment, it helps to pair the new starter with a buddy who is someone that they can go to and ask any question, no matter how basic it seems.

5. Do the management basics – really well

In hybrid teams, managers need to set clear expectations, listen to team members, check in with them, give them feedback and engage them. These factors are even more important for new employees. Taking these actions will help them to make that contribution and see that they are adding value.

As they start to settle in, you can work with them to develop a plan of deliverables for the next few months. Make sure that they have the tools, resources and motivation to succeed.

These five actions listed above will help your new team member to quickly achieve that sense of belonging and be able to start making a contribution. As they become more established, you can carry on doing many of these things, but the focus will change as you continue to engage and motivate your team.

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Remote onboarding: Next steps for your business

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