How to Perform Virtual Employee Onboarding in the New Normal

Employee onboarding is broken again. Just as we were learning to get it right, the Covid-19 pandemic broke it again.  We now have to learn new skills around virtual onboarding of remote workers.

Over the lockdown period in Nigeria, we had a few new employees join our consulting team and it was really strange at first. We started off by getting all new joiners straight to work and hoped to figure things out along the way. However, this approach was fraught with so many issues because the new joiners kept getting stuck on different admin issues. In other cases, there was not much clarity around what they should be doing and as such they ended up working on the wrong things.

We started off by getting all new joiners straight to work and hoped to figure things out along the way. However, this approach was fraught with so many issues ....

We were not the only ones trying to figure out how to onboard new joiners during the lockdown. Our clients were also trying to figure it out too. During the lockdown period, our recruitment team helped one of our clients recruit a couple of engineers to join their team. A few days into the job, the engineers still had not heard from anyone in the company. HR didn’t seem to have a plan to integrate the new joiners nor the engineering team have a plan. It took at least 4 weeks before any of new joiners got assigned tasks.

Traditionally, employee onboarding was done in person. The HR team would welcome the employee at the door and take them through an orientation programme. The new joiner would possibly be introduced to the team formally and get to understand what each team member's role. Even in companies where there was no real orientation programmer, new joiners could still integrate into the team, simply by going into the office and asking questions from those around. However, since the Covid-19 lockdown, many companies have had to embrace remote working and also remote hiring. Managers are now grappling with how to effectively hire and onboard employees virtually.

There are no hard or fast rules to performing virtual employee onboarding, however its important to have a plan. It is important to create multiple opportunities for new joiners to learn about their new work environment (albeit virtual) and get their questions answered.   Because there are no shoulders to tap on whenever new joiners get stuck, it’s also important to be intentional about assigning a virtual buddy to them.

An employee's first week could be a period of high anxiety but having a personalised schedule helps give clarity as to what needs to happen during their first week

Below, I share an approach we have adopted at Cousant for virtual employee onboarding:

Personalised Orientation Schedule

Every new joiner gets a personalised schedule that shows the planned virtual orientation activities in the first week with us. We would usually send this schedule to the employee before their start date. The schedule is very simple and covers numerous virtual meetings where we share information about the company, administrative concerns, responsibilities, technology setup etc.

An employee's first week could be a period of high anxiety but having a personalised schedule helps give clarity as to what needs to happen during their first week and it also helps to build a sense of excitement as they embark on a new journey.

Virtual Buddy

Employees are assigned a virtual buddy when they join the company. The role of the virtual buddy is to guide new joiners through the first few weeks and to be on hand to answer questions. The virtual buddy can also perform e-introductions to other members of the team as required.

It’s important, the virtual buddy is selected from the team the employee will be joining so as to help with answering questions related to team objectives and methodologies.

Virtual Team Bonding

New joiners usually have an impact on the rest of the team and as such, effective managers find ways to get the whole team doing something together to enable more natural team bonding. When the new joiner is a remote worker, team bonding becomes difficult to do and if not handled correctly, the new joiner may end up being sidelined or forgotten by the rest of the team. 

It is therefore important to find ways for the team to do something together virtually as quickly as possible. At Cousant, we conduct a simple virtual team bonding sessions where we play simple games like 2 truths and a lie. We have found simple measures like this to be important in helping new joiners integrate better into the team.

When the new joiner is a remote worker, team bonding becomes difficult to do and if not handled correctly, the new joiner may end up being sidelined or forgotten by the rest of the team. 

One-on-one with Manager

In a new joiner’s first week, it’s important to schedule a video call with a leader in the company. The leader uses this meeting to communicate the organisation’s vision, values and also helps the new joiner see how they fit into the big picture.  This sends a clear message to the new joiner that they are important to the organisation and valued.

 If this leader is the direct line-manager of the new joiner, then the line-manager can also use this opportunity to discuss their short to medium term expectations from the employee and how performance is measured.

It is very important for remote workers to hit the ground running and add value to the process immediately

Assign Short Term Deliverables

It is very important for remote workers to hit the ground running and add value to the process immediately.   It is in this process of being productive that the new joiner can learn and better integrate with the team. This also helps the new joiner learn to succeed with the team from the start so they can get into the habit of succeeding.

For this to work, managers have to carefully think through the hard skills the new joiner is bringing to the table and align these skills with a set of short-term objectives.

There is also another reason why this is important for us at Cousant. Getting remote new hires to be productive immediately helps us essentially assess the performance of someone we have never met before. It helps us quickly find out if we have made a bad hire which is a possibility when hiring employees remotely.

Getting remote new hires to be productive immediately helps us essentially assess the performance of someone we have never met before

The first couple of weeks for new joiners is always a time of anxiety and slight frustration. There is anxiety because it is not entirely clear what they should be doing in those first couple of weeks. There is also some frustration because new joiners want to start being productive immediately but there is still so much they don’t know. These feelings are much more exacerbated when the new joiner is working remotely. By having a solid virtual employee onboarding plan, organisations can easily get new hires settled and adding value to the organisation quickly.

I am curious, how has your employee onboarding process changed since the pandemic started?