Why is a Positive Remote Onboarding Experience So Important?

New joiners have probably been through enormous emotional upheaval in the past few weeks while still experiencing the normal mix of excitement and anxiousness that comes with starting a new role, they have also been faced with huge uncertainty about job security and a very different, remote onboarding experience. If you have someone new joining your remote or hybrid team, it is important to know what you can do to help them get off to the best start possible.

If we think about onboarding as the first few months of adjusting to social and performance aspects of a new role, it is a critically important HR management function that if done well, it helps the new joiner to hit the ground running at work earlier and to form a positive impression and loyalty of their new employer. Effective onboarding achieves two core things:

Belonging – the new joiner feels as if they are a part of a team, not just sitting on the side-lines. They know ‘who is who’, start to build relationships and feel that the organisation is a place where they can enjoy their work – they feel happier that they made the right decision to work for the company.

Contribution – the new joiner has gained knowledge and understanding and is starting to share. They are adding value to the rest of the team or the organisation by completing tasks, sharing thoughts and shaping how they can increase their contribution going forward.

Five ways to onboard your remote employees well

These goals are the same whether you are talking about a team that is always located in the same office, a totally remote team, a geographically dispersed or a hybrid team. The difference is that when people are not working together face to face, you have to be much more proactive – you have to consciously make sure that you are doing everything right from afar, because you will not have the benefit of having the same mini-check-ins together as you grab a coffee, pass their desk etc.

Here are five actions you can take to achieve these goals:

Get to know them. Spend time getting to know them, ask what they want from their on-boarding, what they think will be more difficult because of working remotely and how you can work together during this time. Be willing to open up and share your experiences as well – this is about building a strong, trusting working relationship, it is not a second part of the interview!

Make introductions. Help them to build relationships with the team and the wider organisation. Set up calls to introduce them to people and involve them straight away in any team activities, group initiatives, communication calls etc. so they feel part of the team faster. It helps to prioritise the people they meet, focusing more on those people they will interact with most – if they meet 50 people in the first week, they most likely will not remember many of them!

Conduct a formal orientation. Often the first half-day of induction helps the new joiner to understand some of the fundamentals – how the email works, what the company’s overall mission and purpose is, who the key customers are, organisational structure, information on products, processes, compliance and culture. Remember to put this on the onboarding agenda as an initial briefing – make it easy for the new joiner to review the information, for example, by saving all core documents in a file that they can easily find.

Set up a knowledge buddy. One area that is usually difficult to manage when changing jobs is that on the first day, the new joiner naturally does not know how things are done in the workplace. Yes, it might be written up in processes and documents, it might be covered in the formal orientation, but there are other information and details that no one thinks to tell you. Mostly such information is made aware by asking other people – it is a quicker way and tells you how things are really done, not how they are meant to be done! In an office, it is easy for the new joiner to informally ask people how to book a meeting room, where the shared documents are stored, who to contact if they have a technology issue, how to submit expenses etc. In a remote environment setting, it helps to pair them up with a buddy – someone who they can go to and ask any question, no matter how basic it seems.

Do the management basics – really well. At the moment, more than ever, managers need to be setting clear expectations, listening to team members, checking in with them, giving them feedback and engaging them. These become even more important for new employees – helping them to make that contribution and see that they are adding value. As they start to settle in you can work with them to develop a plan of deliverables for the next few months, and make sure that they have the tools, resources and motivation to succeed.

Performing these actions will help a new joiner to quickly achieve that sense of belonging and be able to start making a contribution to the organisation. As they become more established the focus changes as you continue to engage and motivate your team as a whole.

If you have any further questions or concerns about hiring in the current climate, please contact your NADIA consultant, or visit our Training Institute to access a collection of resources that will help you & your team whilst working remotely.