7 Best Practices for Remote Employee Onboarding + Checklist

Daily or weekly team stand ups or meetings can also help, it will give your new employee the chance to learn what everything else is working on, any priorities and how their role fits in. The following 7 tips will help you foster a strong sense of belonging from the get go, and impart your company’s values onto new employees via strong remote onboarding. Studies have proven that a strong onboarding process yields positive adjustment outcomes of new workers to their employers and improves job satisfaction. Using technology like CloudCall’s call recording feature can make processes such as remote training much easier.

It’s good to set milestones for the first 30, 60, 90 or even 120 days on the new job. According to Live Career’s 2021 Study, half of remote workers feel that they don’t get the same amount of feedback they would receive in the office.

Remote onboarding: An unchartered territory

Here are some remote onboarding best practices to institute at your company. Ask for regular feedback from new employees, whether this be in the form of surveys or during check-in sessions. This gives the new starter the opportunity to say if something is not meeting their expectations or if they have any issues whatsoever. Try to understand how the process is helping them, what is working well for them and what needs changing. Using a mix of specific and open questions will give the opportunity for them to provide feedback that is both detailed and useful in continuing the onboarding process. It is really useful for a new team member to have another contact in the team, who is not their manager, to ask questions and seek support from. This will help the new employee feel connected to the team, and form other close working relationships.

It can also be worthwhile to arrange some virtual training sessions that will get them up to speed and help them feel comfortable using the programs and software your company uses. For more tips to implement in your remote team today, check out our articles on cultivating healthy work relationships and creating a positive work culture. Remember to be extremely clear in these guidelines- some bits of information may seem obvious to you, but may not be to someone who has just joined the organisation. Every company needs a good onboarding process, even more so in the case of remote work. Building a communication network could include leveraging video conferencing software like Zoom, Skype – as well as training tools with simple integrations, like eduMe.

Clarity and connectivity from day one

She is continually getting feedback and developing new remote onboarding best practices. For example, if recent hires report that they are having trouble with a particular online tool they need to use, Avelar might have the team produce a video of step-by-step instructions. This app randomly matches colleagues who rarely or never communicate with one another to get more people acquainted throughout the company.

But it’s still important that you clearly communicate your expectations and their responsibilities before they start work. But this could be all about to change, thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic. New hires cannot simply observe how things are done by their colleagues at the office. There are fewer opportunities for casual interactions, like stopping by the new hire’s desk to welcome them to the team or chatting over coffee during a break. It’s harder to form connections without being physically together, which can make new employees feel isolated and lost.

Remote Onboarding

Other employers offer different opportunities to engage with new hires. I’d love to hear more about your current initiatives and how you’re reaching your people. Send me a message on LinkedIn and stay tuned for the next part of our remote onboarding series where we get an insider glimpse into employees’ perspectives. Depending on the individual, personalise sending something to their home address to make them feel included. Or take a more relaxed approach to the induction by getting to know the individual. Have one-on-one time so they feel you’re there to support, whether that’s a coffee date, “get to know you” or a team lunch. This should be daily at first and can become less regular as they begin to settle into the role and become more familiar with the company as a whole.

It also allows them to share any difficulties directly with their managers. Without face-to-face interaction, establishing a meaningful connection with new colleagues and an entirely new company is far more difficult. When compounded with a lack of company culture, sporadic communication and inefficient software, the physical isolation of remote working can be a recipe for early churn. Crucially, this should be a conversation — not a senior employee dictating terms. Encourage new hires to ask questions and make sure they know that being wrong is still a success.

All remote staff need to meet legal and regulatory requirements before they start. Again, you remote onboarding best practices mustn’t leave this too late and clog up someone’s time during that first week on the job.

Remote workers can’t pick up on organisational knowledge or culture as easily as their office-based colleagues because they aren’t physically with their co-workers. It’s crucial you onboard remote workers properly, so details about the brand and its culture can be delivered as soon as possible. We hope that after reading this, you understand why every company needs a strong onboarding process. It helps to establish a connection between new employees and the company, lets them know what is expected of them, makes them feel included and increases the chances of them staying for longer. That way you can not only ensure that your current new hires have the best experience possible but also gain valuable insights about what’s working in your onboarding and what still needs polishing. You can send a follow-up email, asking your new employees about their onboarding experience, have them fill out a survey or simply have a chat about this during your video check-ins. Try to have weekly one-on-one meetings too, particularly while they still settle in, that way everyone is on the same page as to how the new employees is getting on or if they’re struggling with anything.