How do I successfully onboard new starters remotely?

Here at Just Content, we’re no strangers to the challenges and triumphs of running a fully remote workplace. We recently moved from a hybrid model to a fully remote one, and we’ve also spent the first quarter of 2024 rapidly expanding our workforce and introducing our new delivery team structure. It has certainly been an exciting period of change for us!?

In the wake of the pandemic, it’s clear that more companies than ever before are experimenting with hybrid or remote models of working. According to Statista, around 40% of UK workers now spend at least some of their working week from home.?

With this in mind, and knowing that many of our clients and associates also adopt remote or hybrid ways of working, we’ve pooled our insights and put together our top takeaways for onboarding new starters remotely.??

Why remote working?

The benefits of remote working are endless: not least, a remote working policy cultivates a culture of trust and respect between the company and its employees; it allows for colleagues to choose a working pattern that suits their lifestyle and obligations outside of work, meaning that they are able to tailor their work-life balance, and are therefore more likely to be retained; and, of course, there is the real-term financial impact on a company’s bottom line. More home-working means less office space, and fewer overheads in rent and utility bills! Remote working also opens up the recruitment pool: rather than hiring from a cohort within a commutable distance, you can look to hire the very best people for the job regardless of their location.

Building out a robust onboarding process

When bringing new starters into the fold remotely, it’s more important than ever to get new colleagues integrated into your workplace culture, their team and the company’s ethos and mission statement. Think about building some of the following into your onboarding process:

• Set up a pre-start meeting with your new starter and key internal stakeholders to go through important need-to-knows like team structure, reporting lines, key HR policies, and the company’s short-term and long-term strategy. This will help your new starter to feel integrated from Day One, and help them hit the ground running.
• Create an induction plan with measurable and time-relevant milestones to help deliver a seamless induction process that helps your new starter onboard effectively.
• Develop a training and development plan early-on for your new starter, including any compulsory training that they need to undertake in their first few weeks at the company.
• Arrange meetings with your new starter and internal stakeholders like their line manager and direct reports, so they can get familiar with the company culture and get some much-needed facetime with colleagues. Depending on the size of the company, you could also arrange a whole team or whole company welcome meeting. In these meetings, each team member tells the new starter(s) a little bit about themselves i.e. where they live, what their role is, where they've worked previously, their hobbies, to try to get to know each other on a more personal level.
• Conduct a workstation assessment with your new starter to make sure that they have everything they need - from the right hardware (monitor, keyboard, cables) as well as the correct desk setup to help them be their most productive at home.
• Encourage your new starter to fill in a wellness action plan, so managers can help support their new starter with things that might otherwise go unnoticed remotely. For example, how to tell if the person is stressed, or how they like to incorporate exercise or meeting-free time into their day.

Invest in tools to support remote working practices

When you’re working remotely, it’s difficult to have sight of everything that is going on behind computer screens. There are a number of tools available that can help you monitor your team from afar, and ensure that you can mitigate any issues such as overwork or time management early on. Some of our favourites are:

• ClickUp: an all-in-one resource management, scheduling and planning software that centralises your team and projects into one live timeline
• Trello: a project management platform that centres collaboration, task management and progress monitoring using boards, task lists, and more
• Microsoft Teams: Great for streamlining communication across teams, whether it’s sharing updates on a project or task or for that all-important “water cooler” chat!?

Be intentional about collaborative working

Communication is the cornerstone of a successful remote workplace, and keeping communication channels open is a great way to ensure that none of your team feels isolated or under-supported when working from home.?

Put in place regular team stand-ups for quick check-ins about priorities and workloads, and use this time to celebrate recent successes and tackle any arising challenges in day-to-day tasks. Supplement your stand-ups with more formal monthly company update meetings, where, as a business leader, you can inform colleagues on progress on strategy and KPIs, keeping everyone abreast of the overall health of the company and develop a culture of transparency.?

Don’t forget to allow time to be social too. One of the drawbacks of home working is that there is no “water cooler” where those small but all-important chats can happen over a chance meeting in a physical office. Making time for your team to be social is just as important as those stakeholder meetings, and encourages collaboration and comradery amongst colleagues. If possible, make time for in-person collaboration days too: this may be as infrequent as once or twice a year depending on where your colleagues are based. This is a great opportunity to share good news and introduce personality into team dynamics as well as networking.?

Final thoughts

Building a remote workspace, and onboarding new starters into that workspace, can be challenging at times, but ultimately the flexibility and collaborative opportunities that it can offer is an attractive prospect for new recruits. Overall, working remotely is about fostering trust and respect between employee and employer. Ensuring that you have the right tools, process and practices in place to support your remote workers is the key to success.