How To Onboard Remotely

Here’s some practical tips and advice from our very own Operations and People Partner, Chrissie Yates…

A welcoming remote onboarding experience is a great way of engaging new remote employees from the off.

For companies used to face-to-face inductions and introduction, having to adjust this year to remote onboarding has certainly been challenging.

Now, it looks like the future may be more working from home than from the office, companies may have the opportunity to hire completely remote employees in the future.

Working remotely, we lose the ability to ask a niggling question or even just observe team behaviours, so it’s likely that new employees will take a bit longer to get up to speed during the remote onboarding process.

Here’s some takeaways to help you improve your remote onboarding experience.

The best onboarding experiences have a lot of touch points before the person starts.  Use that time to ensure the new person is clear on what they are coming into.  Focus on creating a good experience for this new starter.

1. Create plenty of post-offer touchpoints with new recruits

2. Build strong and positive manager-employee relationships early on

3. Emphasise and signpost support available

4. Adapt and communicate performance expectations

5. Trust the abilities of your new starters and build their confidence

6.  Do not micromanage—give recruits the autonomy to own their work

7. On your new recruits’ arrival, lean into potential changes in team dynamic

8. Gather focused and regular feedback from your new recruits and the wider team

9. Adapt processes to suit a newly dispersed team

10. Provide a confidential environment for feedback to encourage honesty

11. Encourage a collaborative effort to welcome a new recruits

12. Get the wider team involved in support and training

13. Create a well-documented remote onboarding process

14. Ensure people managers cultivate your values and ways of working

15. Create opportunities for social interactions across the business

16. Pay extra attention to the wellbeing of new recruits (who may not feel as comfortable speaking up)

Immersing people into culture when working remotely will always be a tough one.  It’s harder for people to build relationships, it’s harder to observe team dynamics, and it’s ultimately harder to see the interactions across the wider business that help define what your organisational culture is.

Hopefully taking onboard these tips will help your new recruits feel part of the team in no time.