6 Top Tips on Remote Onboarding
Posted on 18th May 2020 at 12:22
If you have new starters joining the company who will be working from home how can you give them a great remote onboarding experience helping them to become engaged quickly with the business culture?
Effective onboarding results gives 54% better productivity because new hires are able to learn more quickly from existing employees and master their roles at a quicker rate. Great onboarding also reduces staff turnover, which in turn reduces costs. Did you know that most employees within the first week of being with a company have already decided as to how long they plan to stay?
Therefore, onboarding remotely needs to be just as effective as face to face. What can you do to ensure that this happens?
Click below to read our top 6 tips to give your new starters a great experience, increase your retention and ensure their productivity.
1. Pre-boarding
Make sure that before the first day all of the right equipment is delivered so that the person can start on day 1. Communicate with the individual around what they will need and what you will provide so that they are clear what they will need to be able to do the job.
2. Be clear what good looks like for you and the candidate
What are your objectives for your onboarding programme, and what do you want the individual to achieve during their first week, fortnight and 30 days? As the tech is going to be so important in working remotely make sure that you include time to train on internal systems and processes and who will be responsible for getting them up to speed.
3. Plan day 1 carefully
Ensure that on the first day of the new start that everyone who will be involved with the individual spends some time with them remotely, ideally via video chat, rather than a phone call. Encourage meetings over coffee rather than everyone staring into their laptop cameras – a shared activity helps with long term communication. Plan a remote team meeting with all of the key members of their team.
4. Establish clear lines of communication and a buddy system
Whilst it is important that your new starter understands the correct lines of communication and reporting. I would also introduce a buddy system with one person who is there to answer all of the trivial questions that anyone starting with a new company has. Whether it is someone’s name that they didn’t catch in a meeting or how to order stationery. These can halt productivity and successful integration into the role.
5. Schedule regular check-ins
Agree when you want to speak and make it more than once daily to start with.
6. Provide feedback on performance
Agree with the individuals their first day and week objectives and feedback to them. If they are working from home other than your feedback, they will have no idea as to how well they are doing, or if they are meeting your expectations. I would also ask them for feedback on your remote onboarding process a couple of weeks in. This could likely be the start of a new way of starting people within the organisation, rather than a one-off experience.
Whilst remote on-boarding may seem strange at first, this is the new normal and as more and more of our teams start remote working it seems to be clear that all companies will need to be able to effectively onboard staff remotely.
Tagged as: candidate experience, induction process, remote induction process, remote on-boarding, remote onboarding
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