How to Onboard Virtually

Onboarding is one of the most important things to set an employee up for success. Getting off to a strong start creates momentum from which to build and accelerate. Getting off to a poor start breaks a new employee's confidence and leads the organization to question the wisdom of the hire. While it can be hard to imagine recreating a fun and memorable onboarding program that can live up to what you may traditionally do in person, there are many benefits that technology unlocks through virtual onboarding.

Most of the leaders we interviewed for Leading at a Distance acknowledged that onboarding virtually is just plain hard. In our Virtual Experience Survey, employee onboarding was cited as the single factor most negatively impacted by virtual work.

Although remote onboarding includes some straightforward, logistical steps, such as setting up a new colleague’s technology, providing access to systems, and acquainting the new person with key organizational processes, the more critical, make-or-break parts of onboarding are about:

• Giving your new colleague early comfort and confidence – making them feel welcome
• Establishing a foundation for strong relationships across the organization
• Building an understanding of the culture and how work gets done
• Setting clear expectations and connecting the individual’s work to the broader organizational mission, vision, and goals.

3 Practical Ways to Make Your New Employee Welcome

• 1. Identify, Appoint, and Communicate a Dedicated Onboarding Liaison.

In a non-virtual world, having someone fill the role of informal mentor to support a new hire is a good idea, but it is even more critical remotely because the new leader won’t have colleagues all around them to ask questions as they come up. Creating a reliable, trusted channel for the new employee from the start will allow him or her to focus on absorbing new information and worry less about how and from whom to get questions answered.

• 2. Create a Connection to the Company Before Day One.

As soon as any new employee, from entry level manager to the CEO, agrees to come on board and a start date has been set, find an opportunity to make the new employee feel a part of the family. New employees are often at the peak of emotional openness and feeling of positivity to the company right before they start, so use the opportunity to cement the connection to the soon-to-start employee.  Reckitt Benckiser, the global consumer products company, sends a care package to employees’ homes before their start date, complete with a selection of the company’s cleaning, health, and hygiene products.  Find ways to create a strong connection.

• 3. Set up Technology Ahead of the Start Date.

A practical tip for helping your new employee enter their first day with confidence is to set up their technology ahead of the start date. Prepare and send them a company-issued lap-top and phone with all the security protocols and customized software. Then have a session before day one with a company expert and liaison to show how the platforms operate, including the videoconferencing platform, communications channels, and other company systems.  Simulating the experience and troubleshooting any potential technology and communications issues prior to the first day will allow your new employee to be fully present and comfortable on their first day. If issues do arise, they will have a familiar face to help them navigate.

Build Strong Relationships Across the Organization

Beyond the tactical, it's also essential to help your new employee establish a foundation of strong relationships across the organization. In the onboarding phase, it's best to invest in even more frequent and varied interactions between the employee, key stakeholders, and teammates up front than you would during traditional, in-person onboarding. In a virtual setting, you can’t rely as much as the organic and spontaneous relationship-building that happens in hallways, over lunches, and at office events. That’s why it’s best to be intentional about setting up formal and informal one-on-one interactions between the new hire and other individuals. Additionally, it is important to organize a mix of different group discussions so that the new hire can develop contextual understanding of team dynamics. One risk of virtual work is that it can make it easy for an individual or leader to operate in silos or with the same network of people on a regular basis. Creating both a strong core network and a broader network across the organization will allow the executive to be more successful long term. 

Explain the Culture and How Work Gets Done

Many organizations rely on organic ways of communicating shared history and norms. Whether virtually or not, memorializing a company’s history in videos, in the About Us section on the website, and in documents can help accelerate a process that may otherwise take longer to capture over a series of many interactions with long-standing members of the organization. Additionally, as awkward as it may seem, it can be helpful to create explicit guidance and communication around norms that are often taken for granted – the company’s tone and level of formality, dress code, virtual etiquette on videoconferences, messaging norms, and working hours. Leaving someone to observe, guess, and adapt to these norms on their own can create unnecessary ambiguity and stress.

Connect the Individual's Work to the Broader Organizational Mission, Vision, and Goals

A new hire should have a clear picture of what success looks like for the first 100 days and beyond. New employees should recognize how their responsibilities fit into the overall success of the company. When an individual joins, the hiring manager should share key communications and presentations that have been done by the leadership of the organization on the near-term and longer-term direction and goals of the company so that the new hire can put their work into context of the whole.

As part of developing a 100-day plan, we advise new CEOs to develop and test their hypotheses about strategy and key priorities with members of the team rather than presenting their plan to their team and the organization at large.  This is true for an employee at any level. No one wants to follow someone who believes that they must be the smartest person in the room. Even if you do happen to possess all the answers as a new employee – which you almost never do – it is far more effective to develop your views about direction and priorities in an iterative shared manner. This is especially in a virtual environment, where a new leader needs to seek all opportunities to build trust, gain buy-in and achieve alignment early on. 

As the new hire is getting up to speed, having a clear set of responsibilities and outcomes can be critical to helping them prioritize and sequence their work and accomplish some quick wins that create a strong foundation and momentum for the individual’s future success. Over the long term, while a role can evolve, adapt, and become more complex and ambiguous, having clarity from the start will create a foundation from which the individual can more readily adapt.

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