Remote Onboarding: Definition, Process, and Best Practices!

A well-thought-out onboarding process helps remote workers understand what’s expected, gain confidence, and settle into the culture. By using video calls, online tools, and digital resources, you can help new employees feel welcomed, and supported. Therefore, your employees feel ready to start working effectively, when they’re working remotely. HR managers should always strive to review and update the onboarding process regularly. The remote onboarding process that worked when an organization had 50 or fewer employees may not be the best as it grows to 100 or more employees. The best way to know if the process has to be changed or tweaked in any way is to ask employees for feedback once they’ve completed onboarding.

Track Performance

A virtual office in Kumospace lets teams thrive together by doing their best work no matter where they are geographically. Welcoming a new employee virtually is a lot different than doing it physically; while it involves the same set of steps, they are done differently, or more – virtually. At this point, the employee should be focusing on completing the necessary training and onboarding materials while getting used to their new environment. At Deel, every new hire is partnered with another newbie so that they can learn and grow together. They also get partnered with a more senior employee who can provide guidance and company insights. Always keep up to date with everything related to management, new processes, methodologies, etc. and get the most out of your team.

Establish Communication & Collaboration Processes

If your company wants to do remote onboarding, it’s great to know more about its advantages, challenges, and best practices. Onboarding remote employees plays a vital role in setting the stage for employee engagement, retention, and success in a remote work setting. As remote employees face unique challenges such as technical and personal issues, a well-designed onboarding process is essential to address these challenges and ensure a smooth transition for new hires. To truly benefit from the onboarding process, it is essential that people teams and HR managers prepare and organize accordingly.

There are remote onboarding best practices that HR leaders and managers can follow to ensure new employees start on the right foot. The best tip we can give you for onboarding remote employees is to be prepared. Create an all-encompassing digital handbook that lets your hires explore your company and learn more about their responsibilities.

Simple identity checks can be carried out in as little as a few hours but a worldwide criminal background check for instance might take several weeks. Our account managers are specialists and can provide detailed information into which checks you need and how long they will take. And even if your industry doesn’t, remember that your staff have access to assets and data that must be protected. When you employ a new staff member you need to be certain that they have the best interests of your business at heart. Carrying out comprehensive background checking helps mitigate risk and ensures a safer hiring decision.

• In particular, if you manage a team, ask each team member to organize a video call with the new remote employee.
• With major tech companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook allowing their employees to work from home indefinitely in the aftermath of COVID-19, remote working projects itself as the future of work.
• You could, for example, plan video mentoring sessions where more experienced team members or managers show new remote employees the ropes and help them to become well-versed in their jobs.
• Have them deliver their intro on a video call, Slack channel, or in person.

Implementing Technology Without Overwhelm

• The steps discussed in this article serve as a valuable starting point for creating a successful remote onboarding experience.
• Technical issues can quickly turn onboarding into a frustrating experience, especially without someone nearby to help.
• During the onboarding process, new recruits get to meet their coworkers and the culture of the firm, as well as learn about the policies and practices that govern their workdays.
• New employees were paired up with someone in a department unrelated to theirs in order to foster linear integration with the company culture.

The reason for this is that there will be less opportunity to tune and tweak the program ‘on the fly,’ so great planning is a must. We can also make a distinction between formal onboarding and informal onboarding process. Formal onboarding process usually involves a series of meetings, workshops, training sessions, video conferences, and exercises.

Onboarding is the formal process of integrating new employees into a company. This process ranges from filling new positions to succession planning for filling vacated positions. This guide offers practical tips for structuring remote onboarding to keep new hires engaged, connected, and set up for long-term success. This may be especially true if you were starting a new job in the ambiguity of a virtual environment. See, without face-to-face interactions, it’s harder to gauge how new hires are settling in. In fact, a study by Glassdoor shows that companies with good onboarding can improve retention by 82% and increase productivity by over 70%.

Customizable Frameworks and Timelines

A well-supported team is more resilient, engaged, productive, and more likely to stay. Their creativity comes in waves, and there will be days when nothing of value comes to mind. They are already outfitted with the latest in cybersecurity tools, so you can piggyback on the existing infrastructure.

Discuss this with your employees and make sure you are transparent about all the goals you have for them and how they’re performing. If one of your employees can’t make a deadline and needs more time/resources, you would want them to reach out to team members and do whatever they can to finish the project in time. Once you have the basics, make different versions for different positions. Every role comes with different responsibilities that need to be disclosed from the beginning.

Part 2: Teamwork During the Onboarding Process

For example, someone from HR or even the Director of their department should also touch base. ISpring Suite Max also has a cloud-based tool that allows you to create quick and simple microcourses in much the same way that remote onboarding best practices social media posts are created. This can be invaluable when adding additional content to an existing program or for any type of course that needs to push out fresh information or is time sensitive. Check this course for new hires for some inspiration on how this tool can be used.

Set Clear Short-Term Goals

While it may not be the same as a physical gathering, it is important nonetheless. Onboarding new employees in groups can help to make the entire process much less stressful for both the employees and employers. Group onboarding provides an easy way for new team members to get to know fellow employees quickly and it is often less intimidating than meeting people one on one. The welcome pack should be aimed at providing new employees with general information that he/she may find useful in their first days and months at the company.

Using this business ID card template, you can create a card that everyone in your company will want to wear. You can give them short training or simple guides, to help new hires join all onboarding activities without stress. That’s why I always ask new hires how comfortable they are using platforms like Slack, Zoom, or Google Meet before they start. For those with unreliable internet, offer solutions like covering coworking space costs.