Remote Onboarding & Integrating Is No More Challenge... Quick Practical Tips To Onboard And Integrate Remote Team Effectively
Remote is the future. It has changed how we work forever. And the benefits of adopting it are tremendous. Adopting it is not easy. However, with the right onboarding strategies and a clear remote onboarding plan, the challenges of remote working can be effectively managed.
The New Reality
Working remote is just the new reality. Rather, a norm thanks to COVID 19 which changed the way we work. All forward-looking companies are taking remote as an opportunity to tap talent from anywhere in the world to gain competitive advantage. Hence, they are making significant changes in their business strategies, both at functional and operational levels.
Companies are diversifying the business geographical risk by having talent in multiple locations across the world. Additionally, remote also helps companies save a significant amount on operational costs of managing people in one office. There are tons of other benefits of remote but this blog is not intended for that, so let’s leave it for another time ??
So, How Do You Embrace Remote?
The word “Remote” sounds very fancy and every company is dreaming to fully embrace remote work model. However, the model comes with lots of challenges. The biggest challenges are onboarding, integrating and retaining new hire into your company culture.
As Sally Stetson, co-founder and principal at Salveson Stetson Group says:
"Hiring and onboarding new employees completely virtually is a new concept for most employers. A lot of companies are trying to figure it out,"
What is there to figure out? Isn’t just the same steps except you do it online?
No. This thinking has cost so many great candidates to a lot of professionals in my circle and the industry as a whole. Remote hiring means understand candidate experience throughout the candidate journey and upgrading it!
For me onboarding starts from the time when company make a job announcement, candidate apply for job, go through series of hiring steps, final job offers, joining company and till the time employee complete its first year. Ensuring that the employee feels welcomed, connected, respected, and has transparent access to job critical information during the whole process is crucial.
Study suggests that 69% of employees stay with a company for a longer-term and are 25% more productive if they had a good onboarding experience. This is difficult to achieve physically. It’s even more difficult online!
My 11 Tips on Running and Effective Remote Hiring, Onboarding & Integration Program
Here are few quick actions item you can note down to make your onboarding process smoother:
Tip #1 Choose the right person
Selection of right person for your remote team is the key. If you hire a person who is not aligned with your culture or not compatible to work remotely, then it will be complete mess for your organization.
So, make your hiring process swift.
Communicating swiftly with the candidate is the key from signing-up for the application, calling for interview, appearing the for interview on time, clarifying JD during the interview, keeping them posted on the outcome of the interviews, and most importantly checking strong reference before placing the offer.
Include a short trial.
Add a short trial/assessment period before onboarding someone in your team. We call it a dating period, where the candidate and employer deep dive with short work assignments and understand each other before signing for long-term relationship.
The employee gets to check the company, its culture, work nature, whereas we check the compatibility of candidate with our company culture. The best thing is to pay the candidate for number of hours of engagements, so the candidate feels it is worth investing time even if not selected for job.
Tip #2 Develop an onboarding plan with clear milestones
Design onboarding plan with key accesses details, machine configuration, buddy name, first 90 days activities/milestones, deadlines, key stakeholder tagging, communication channels etc. Also design an onboarding guideline book for new onboard, it should include but not limited to company history, mission, vision, two years, OKRs, department mantras, important KPIs, SLAs, processes, key communication channels, Performance management system, employee reward process etc.
Send both e-documents to employee before joining via email and give time to new onboard to read documents and come prepared with questions during onboarding process.
Send welcome pack to employee before joining date. Welcome pack can include machine, headset and other company swags like T-shirt, water bottle, chocolate box etc You can add as much sugar as you can to make the swag box sweeter based on size of the pocket of your company.
Tip #3 Assign a buddy
A buddy is the candidate’s go-to person for every question they have. Buddy should be from the same department and team who has experience within company, knows the process and volunteered for new hire.
The quick responsibilities of buddy can be:
- Helping new hire to be comfortable or first point of contact to get instant answer of queries.
- Checking in with the new hire regularly
- Help new hire in connecting with relevant department or data which new hire required.
- Also monitor the actions and behavior closely of new onboard and share findings with team manager. If new onboard is not aligned to company culture better let it go during probation period.
Assigning a buddy to the new onboard and introducing both of them before joining has allowed us to significantly increase the speed of integration of new hires into the culture.
Tip #4 Make first day a smooth sailing ride
Try to hire people in group or batches. It will reduce the time/energy/resources on onboarding them. Their first few days makes or breaks their future stay at the company. So ensure their first day starts of with a bang. This starts with detailed planning.
The new onboard should have their first day plan with them even before joining. This gives them a clear picture of what the day would look like. This includes the time to start the day, whom to meet, meeting agendas, person they should be interacting with, etc.
The important thing to remember is to make it fun, complete, and memorable!.
Start the day with a welcome call with team managers, get the functional onboarding session from department manager. The new hire must have an understanding of key communication channels. I recommend Slack (Why? It’s a discussion on its own ??)
This is followed by setup of all the key accesses of system. This is where we ask IT person to help new onboard setup new access and develop understanding.
Include a must-have first day HR session to get new onboard understanding of company history, vision, key team members, key policies etc.
Next, introduce new onboard with his/her team members via Zoom or any other selected channel. Allow the new onboard to have an understanding with team members, allow break-out sessions to have informal chit chat and build a rapport.
You can add gamification part on the first day. Use scavenger hunt tasks to get new onboard familiar with key people of the organization and complete a designed task. You can make it more interesting with many ideas. The important thing to remember is to make it fun, complete, and memorable!
Tip #5 Make welcome announcement
Make an official announcement across your organization about joining of new onboard to make new employee feel recognized in the family rather than just in one function.
Make new onboards feel welcome by making sure people wish them. Ideally, the CEO should congratulate them to boost the morale of new onboard and he/she feels connected with family.
Tip #6 Check-in regularly
Make the new hires feel at home. Check-in regularly with a new employee help in assessing the effectiveness of onboarding process and help you to make quick changes in the process if things are not going as per plan.
Use the milestones added in the onboarding document to assess their progress and make changes if needed. Regular check-ins will also help in getting real-time feedback around onboarding process.
Use the feedback to refine the plan so that both your company and future employees can reap the benefits. Checking in with an employee can be as simple as sending an e-mail or arranging a video call.
It is also important to note that it shouldn’t just be the manager who checks in. Someone from HR should also touch base through in person interaction and on bi-monthly basis check pulse through happiness survey and if your company is small enough, the Director of their department or CEO should take the time to check-in, too.
Tip #7 Actively Seek Buddy and Supervisor Feedback
HR should take regular feedback from supervisor about progress of new remote onboard. Also check with buddy to share feedback about new onboard actions and behaviors. Data can help organization to make real time adjustment in onboarding process and coach and mentor new onboard if needed.
Tip #8 Organize an off-site meeting or group gathering
Extended remote work can alienate your workforce. I recommend organizing two off-sites in a year, where you give chances to your remote workforce to interact and have feeling of engagement and belonging. If you have team members cross border, call twice in a year in your office to make him/her feel connected. I assure you it works well.
Tip #9 Include formal and collaborative learning
I recommend designing formal self-paced online training material and assign to new hires. Track progress via an LMS.
Ideally, in customer facing roles, design online self-paced courses and online live learning sessions with team manager. Provide remote onboard with enough opportunities to learn from each other. This is especially important during the onboarding process because it offers yet another way of building a strong team-oriented culture, even if the employees do not work together on the same premises. Repots suggest that 96% employees stay longer with a company if provided with training during work tenure.
Tip #10 Train Your Managers
The concept of remote work has been around for a while, but many managers are still not experienced in hiring, onboarding, integrating and engaging remote workforce. Remote work has its own unique challenges, so it is important that managers are trained enough to handle it.
I’ve observed that in most cases of failure, it’s lack of training for the managers results in managers falling back to micromanaging teams which quickly creates a toxic culture.
Since remote working culture is based on having clear communication, knowing how to use communication platforms effectively is essential.
BONUS TIP: Embrace a remote-friendly culture
It’s important to remember that both on-site and off-site employees have different requirements. People who are working on-site can interact with each other physically which reduces the feeling of isolation. This means it’s easier for them to visually see each other’s energy levels and health, and also quickly connect and sort challenges. It’s easier to make them feel included in decisions.
However, a people working remotely experience it differently. It’s the organization’s responsibility to invest in creating remote-friendly culture so both on-site and off-site employee feel valued, welcomed and part of team.
Most of the time, remote employee feels loneliness if communication between the team and him/her is not swift. This can lead the employee to think that he/she is not important, and can ultimately lead to churn.
Additionally, both on-site and off-site employees should share the same benefits, else it will lead to feelings of discrimination and dissatisfaction. A small example is if your company is sending gifts on any occasion to local team better you should send to global team too ??
Finally, don’t overload new employee with tons of knowledge. Share information in chunks, so employee can absorb and understand.
In Conclusion
Remote is the future. It has changed how we work forever. And the benefits of adopting it are tremendous.
Adopting it is not easy. However, with the right onboarding strategies and a clear remote onboarding plan, the challenges of remote working can be effectively managed.
Remote model is still in infancy stage and most of us are used to working in an environment where we work in a physical office setting. Therefore, it’s ideal time to make the most of remote work model and start preparing your organization to remain competitive by opting into the remote work model.
Remember, the outcome of any successful remote onboarding process should be to make the new employee feel like they are part of the team.
All the best!