Remote Onboarding: Best Practice Guide & Challenges

Organizations can build connections with remote employees during onboarding through virtual introductions, team-building activities, and mentorship programs. Gathering feedback from new hires through surveys, interviews, and focus groups can provide valuable insights for further improvement. At the end of the day, most employees care about more than just their compensation.

BONUS TIP: Create a remote-friendly culture

At advanced stages of the training program, give them real work with short deadlines while providing feedback. Time to proficiency, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction are key performance remote onboarding best practices indicators used to measure onboarding success. Kelly Main is a Marketing Editor and Writer specializing in digital marketing, online advertising and web design and development.

Structured Onboarding Plan

1. Conduct surveys, schedule exit interviews, and hold focus groups to gain valuable insights into their experience.
2. Time to proficiency, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction are key performance indicators used to measure onboarding success.
3. Instead of a first-day lunch, consider holding virtual happy hours or coffee breaks to introduce the new hire to the team.
4. Doing this before the start date minimizes technical issues and allows new employees to be fully present and more comfortable on day one.

When thoughtfully implemented, these strategies can deliver optimal results for HR teams and ensure employees settle into their new jobs. We’ve highlighted some of the most indispensable elements to successfully onboard remote employees. Keep these in mind when creating your onboarding process, and you can set the stage for healthy, long-term professional relationships with all your new hires. Before kicking off the remote onboarding process, make sure you introduce your new team member. Alternatively, you can arrange a video call with a few team members to introduce them to one another. In addition, set up security measures for your email system, such as antivirus protection and hardware encryption.

Inclusivity and Accessibility

Companies like GitLab, a leader in remote work, have successfully implemented this type of onboarding plan, allowing new remote team members to adjust to the remote life at GitLab. A valuable benefit to regular check-ins is that it sets the right stage for receiving constant https://remotemode.net/ feedback on the onboarding process. Besides addressing any potential issues as they arise, you are also likely to get a much clearer idea of where you can improve. Follow-ups for employees can be as simple as an email or a message on your communication tool, like Slack.

Remote Onboarding Guide: How to Help Remote Workers Get Productive Faster

Group onboarding helps make managing all your new hires far less of a hassle and can save a lot of time for your managers. You can also share an employee handbook with the new remote worker and their managers, detailing every step of the process. Integrate them into your company’s culture with virtual social events — like game nights, virtual happy hours, and more — spread out throughout the year. Training refers to specific courses or modules dedicated to the new hire’s learning and development. Training could focus on behaviors, tools, products, compliance, and security. If your culture is social, schedule introduction calls, happy hours, or lunch-and-learns with new hires and employees from across departments.

Create a detailed remote onboarding strategy.

This can seriously affect their productivity as well as their experience of the work environment and can be avoided by ensuring that constant communication takes place. The concept of working remotely has been around for years but many managers still use traditional methods to manage team members. Because remote workers face their own unique set of challenges, it is important that managers receive the appropriate training.

It also allows them to get to know their colleagues and build relationships with them. An effective onboarding program is considerably more important now with the increasing popularity of remote work. Your objective with employee training sessions is to prepare your new employee with all the tools and information they need to do as great a job as possible.

It can also be beneficial to include a Q&A section designed to familiarize the employee with the company’s culture and important processes. If you decide to choose a learning management system to host your training and onboarding, be sure to keep these things in mind when adding training modules. So, encourage collaboration by promoting open communication, active listening, and recognizing contributions.

It’s much easier for new employees to build relationships when they know who’s who ahead of time. Help them put names to faces with interactive tools like an org chart, employee directory, and who’s who quiz using Pingboard. Here are the most important measures you can take to make remote onboarding seamless and help your new hires succeed. Remote workers also face different day-to-day challenges than their in-person counterparts. According to Buffer’s 2021 State of Remote Work, they struggle to unplug, collaborate and communicate effectively, and ward off loneliness and distractions. Set clear expectations around work hours and make sure your team respects each other’s time outside of work.

The key to successful remote working lies in how easy login credentials for business-critical tools can be shared and accessed. New employees need access to a plethora of online accounts to effectively do their job. By familiarizing new remote employees as quickly as possible with business-critical tools, they will be able to become self-dependent and begin adding value far quicker. Existing onboarding plans that are aimed at on-site employees can often be altered so that they are more suitable for the onboarding of remote employees. When you can onboard with a cohort, you give your employees someone else to lean on.

These check-ins serve as an opportunity to sit down with them to ensure they’re comfortable and happy. Don’t forget to acknowledge any of their contributions and ask them if they need additional training or support. Regular check-ins can mean the difference between a long-term, productive employee and one who quits early on.