Remote onboarding: Best practices for onboarding remote employees

Set employees up for success on their first day by shipping a welcome package in advance of their start date. We want to ensure every new employee (or contractor) can feel comfortable, excited, and informed about how the company operates. However, it also means that you probably have quite a limited amount of time to get everything done. As soon as they become fully remote, it can be more difficult for them to gain access to certain files, sign documents, complete their training and get timely answers. For many organizations worldwide, remote work has become a mainstay, providing employees with… When you set up accounts in advance, each new hire gets only the access they need for their role.

So, ahead of time, order all necessary hardware they’ll need and have it delivered to their home. For many, building a remote first culture is challenging, but worthwhile. Culture is the barometer of how well an organization is communicating and reinforcing its values.

1. HR managers and IT should team up to ensure that protocols are followed and policies communicated.
2. Remote onboarding is the process of familiarizing new hires with the organization, its people, and its culture.
3. And remember, you need to be sure your office has the right setup in both the virtual and physical workplace.
4. Do they know whom to contact to solve their issues and how to get help quickly?
5. For remote workers, provide opportunities for new hires to access online courses during or after orientation and a stipend for the personal and professional development of their choosing.
6. Even if the required software isn’t set up on time, you can still install it after delivering the hardware components.

best practices and checklist for remote onboarding

1. Offering each new employee a session with IT to show him or her how the videoconferencing platform, communication channels, and other company systems work can alleviate first-day anxiety.
2. To make the remote onboarding process as smooth as possible, have someone from IT on standby to help the new hire troubleshoot any technical issues.
3. Use group rules to assign memberships based on employee type, department, division, and region, provisioning necessary applications and system access.
4. If an organization consists of multiple departments, it’s beneficial for a new hire to meet other colleagues they might be working with.
5. Wrap up the first year with a final meeting to conclude the onboarding process and conduct the first performance review.

They’ll need the right technology, tools and resources to become familiar with the company and to get to know their co-workers and managers. If the onboarding process for remote employees isn’t up to par, employers could risk losing hardworking talent. As the number of people working remotely continues to rise, it becomes increasingly important to have a robust remote onboarding process in place. This requires HR professionals to rethink their approach to onboarding. The steps discussed in this article serve as a valuable starting point for creating a successful remote onboarding experience.

Partnering with an Employer of Record (EOR) like RemoFirst makes the process much easier. An EOR acts as the employees’ legal employer, which includes shouldering all the human resource tasks for remote hires that can make managing global teams a challenge. In addition, the first 30 days should include setting clear expectations regarding the employee’s responsibilities and deliverables.

The new hires should receive all necessary hardware, including computer, mouse, cable, USB sticks, phone, etc., on the very first day. Any delay in setting this up will slow down the employee training process and affect productivity from the get-go. Make sure the new hires are first provided with all the hardware required to perform their job. Even if the required software isn’t set up on time, you can still install it after delivering the hardware components.

It’s essential to point out mistakes during training and show the correct methods, strategies, or techniques they should use. If possible, you can offer the training via a remote training software that monitors their progress and provides scores once training is completed. Additionally, it’s simply helping them build their first connections quickly. Welcome buddies are usually remote onboarding best practices existing employees who understand your processes well.

⚠️ Key Challenges of Onboarding Remotely

Even if you’ve established a healthy culture of psychological safety, remote new hires may not implicitly feel it right away. They won’t be a witness to their infallible veteran colleagues frantically debugging issues and coming to the realization that the issue was something small and obvious. Joining a new team brings on a whirlwind of emotions and an overwhelming amount of information—and, combined, that’s pretty stressful. When I first joined a company as a developer, I felt like the biggest imposter in the world.

Instead of requiring them to take time out from their job to help your new employees, the answers are readily available in your knowledge base. These findings suggest that remote onboarding offers tremendous potential for employee engagement — and clear downsides if done poorly or not at all. Remote work is here to stay, but onboarding these employees often requires a different approach than when everyone’s at the same office or job site. Explore our best practices for remote onboarding so you can improve the employee experience no matter where your workforce is located. Business owners generally agree that success rests heavily on new hires themselves.

Use “Cohorts” When Onboarding Remotely

You must partner with an IT hardware management service provider to implement such a portal. Workwize offers end-to-end device lifecycle management solutions that can onboard new hires with minimal friction. Here are eight effective onboarding strategies to give new joiners a hassle-free and engaging experience while lifting the heavy load off your shoulders. The page also provides an overview of the relevant Slack channels to which new people team members will be added. Additionally, there is a list of relevant links for sales team onboarding, developer onboarding, and more.

Case Study: GitLab’s remote onboarding process

If they’re located in a different time zone, they need to know the best possible time to reach out to you for assistance. For new hires, the first few weeks of joining a new company can be a period of uncertainty and anxiety. As such, having a dedicated person to hold their hands through every stage makes them comfortable and familiar with their new work environment. After each step, you can assign them a series of activities to complete to assess their comprehension of the subject/task. At advanced stages of the training program, give them real work with short deadlines while providing feedback. This approach reduces security incidents, creates a security-aware culture, and, most importantly, increases policy adherence (because they’ll understand it).

Such feedback can reveal problems and allow your company to address them immediately and for future hires. The right employee onboarding software frees up employees and managers for tasks that require a human touch and starts off the employee’s tenure on a positive note. Human capital management (HCM) systems can help companies create an onboarding experience that’s consistent, accessible and largely automated, especially when they are designed for onboarding. Solutions such as Criterion’s enable HR teams to customize onboarding hubs, capture data that informs further action and automate administrative responsibilities, among other features. But beyond the evolution of employee onboarding management, it is necessary to improve all HR practices during significant organizational changes. HR software are solutions adapted to our current and future needs and represent the start of a major shift towards business digital transition.

Shorter modules act as milestones that provide new hires with a roadmap to know how far they have progressed. If you choose to include milestones as part of your onboarding process, make sure that each milestone is about the same size and difficulty. It can defeat the entire process of using milestones if one module is significantly longer or harder than the rest. If an organization consists of multiple departments, it’s beneficial for a new hire to meet other colleagues they might be working with.