Keys to Successful Remote Onboarding

It’s no secret that a positive onboarding experience can help ensure that your new employees are productive as soon as possible, engaged with your firm, and more likely to stay. A great onboarding program that appeals to the head, hands and heart of the new employee, quickly making them feel at home and able to start making a positive contribution from the very beginning of their relationship with you is crucial to their ongoing success in a new role.

There is no reason an employee working from home due to lockdown restrictions or otherwise cannot be given a positive onboarding experience with a few simple tweaks.

Here are four practical tips for using technology to create an unforgettable onboarding experience that your new employees will truly appreciate.

Have everything in place AHEAD of their start day

• Ensure all IT equipment is set up and delivered to them ahead of their start date
• Provide them with a full IT induction prior to their first day, if possible, to avoid any technical glitches preventing them from working, and to introduce them to the IT support staff
• Send them a welcome package – think mugs, tea leaves, drink bottles, a plant, stationary, snacks. Consider including a welcome note from you.
• Appoint someone in the team to be their “buddy” and have them connect ahead of the start date. The buddy should not be their direct manager, but someone on the team they can go to with all their inevitable new starter questions

Provide them with various opportunities to connect with team members from all areas of the organisation

• Provide formal and informal opportunities to meet with their own team members and others within the organisation – team meetings, one on one meetings with other department members, debrief meetings, virtual lunches and coffees and virtual social gatherings
• Ensure they’re meeting with key people in other teams to help foster opportunities for work referrals and cross pollination by allowing them to sit in on group discussions and project meetings
• This helps avoid the feeling of working in a silo, and provides some context to how things are done in your organisation
• Plan to make yourself available for regular check-ins, once or twice daily, for the first week or so

 Don’t expect them to organically pick up details about the firm’s culture – be explicit

• Learning about the culture or “how we do things around here” is crucial to ensuring they fit in and are able to find their feet
• Consider having key people in the organisation make short “TED Talk” style videos describing the organisation’s history, how they reached their success, and what they do
• Ensure the “About Us” section of your website or intranet is up to date
• Additional information which may be useful and which may help avoid ambiguity includes the dress code, levels of formality, videoconferencing etiquette, norms around messaging others in the organisation, and work hours

Ensure you set very clear expectations with them, and help them connect their role to the firm’s wider goals

• Make it easy for your new hire to understand how their role fits in to the wider success of your organisation
• Give them a clear set of responsibilities and outcomes, and some projects with “quick win” outcomes to help build their confidence
• Share presentations or videos from the leaders of the organisation on their direction and goals
• As their role becomes more complex and ambiguous, they will be able to relate back to the goals and vision which will put the expectations of them in context