Remote Onboarding Checklist For Virtual Employees For 2023

“Our remote onboarding strategy is built with intentionality,” said Debbie Gunning, VP of People at San Francisco-based fintech company Human Interest. Before beginning the onboarding process, new hires at Human Interest receive documents and items to prepare them for the training days ahead. This new hire care package ensures that all new hires start on the same page, whether they’ll be working in-office or not. We anticipate the remote onboarding process to take at least two full weeks, with the third week designated for team-specific onboarding and training. We encourage new team members to participate in their teams’ work in the first two weeks, but without pressure to contribute heavily. In a virtual setting, you can’t rely as much on the organic and spontaneous relationship-building that happens in hallways, over lunches, and at office events.

• The point of remote onboarding is to offer an employee an exciting, integrative experience as part of your organisation, even if they are not in a physical office location.
• Onboarding software that you and your people will instinctively know how to use.
• Seeking employee feedback can help you understand how the onboarding process is helping them, what’s working, and what isn’t.
• “Ask, ‘After your onboarding experience, what are you the most confident in?
• That flexibility is unique to the all-remote environment, as those who prefer a self-guided experience are typically forced into a very social onboarding at colocated companies.
• Moreover, a well-tuned onboarding tool serves as a repository for seasoned employees when they need a refresher.

Luckily, many methods of getting your future teammates excited take up little or no time. We wanted to outline some steps you can take in the first few days to build up this excitement and start their tenure on the right foot. No matter which option you choose for providing equipment when onboarding remote workers, have a plan in place to ensure that new employees receive all the equipment they need before their first day of work. There’s a lot to learn at the start of any new job, and even fairly simple tasks require more time and effort when you’re learning the new tools and who to contact for different needs or issues.

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You can download our free employee onboarding checklist to use as a starting point. Without a physical work environment, you’ll need to rely on video conferencing and online team meetings to get the new team member to feel welcome. You should list out each step of the process and make sure that the new hire doesn’t get confused by the enormous amount of new information that will be presented to them. You also need to help them identify the best channels for asking questions and finding what they need, and this is especially true if they work in another time zone.

Organizational onboarding provides the access to information through handbooks/documentation, and technical onboarding is about using that knowledge to work through the tools. Many https://remotemode.net/ organizations rely on organic ways of communicating shared history and norms. Don’t leave new employees to guess at these issues; doing so can create ambiguity and stress.

Best practice #1: Develop an onboarding plan with clear milestones

Research shows that it’s more powerful to have a broad network than a deep network, especially as one becomes increasingly senior in an organization. Particularly when a new leader onboards, the organization should help him or her intentionally build a broad network, starting internally. Some companies set up a “shadow week” in which the new hire attends a wide variety of team and stakeholder group meetings, even those that may feel less directly relevant to that new hire’s core responsibilities.

It’s not enough to say your core values and hope the talking turns into a good culture. You need to create benefits and programs to incentivize and encourage the behavior. For example, let’s say a new employee will have 15 clients to manage, and for each client they will have responsibility for 1) strategy, 2) meetings, and 3) reporting. Nothing is more frustrating during onboarding than receiving an endless stream of documents to sign. Make this task pain-free by creating a single cache of necessary paperwork for each onboarding procedure.

Video Conferencing Software

Simulate the onboarding experience by role-playing with a colleague to find gaps and inconsistencies, then discuss it with all stakeholders and update the map. Once you’ve determined the purpose of each onboarding exercise, carefully rework your plan with those values in mind and identify the tools you need to support them. There are a variety of software options available including video conferencing platforms, learning management systems (LMS) and employee engagement tools. If a new hire is used to working in a traditional office, adjusting to the remote work lifestyle might be a challenge. Having socialization as part of the onboarding process can help team members feel more connected to their new teams, even though they don’t share an office.

• Including a list of best practices in the employee handbook is advisable.
• If your on-site HR team is swamped or if you don’t have one, this dedicated professional could save you loads of time and stress during the onboarding process.
• This can, in turn, positively affect employee engagement and motivation.
• Organise training sessions with all new employees before they start to ensure that they are able to attend all online induction events, or create guidelines to explain the most important functions in the various tools you use.
• But the first order of business should be to establish policies on providing equipment.

If possible, create an employee handbook that includes everything remote workers need to know. IT teams need to ensure staff have appropriate workstations and operating systems. They need to consider cybersecurity, as well as providing critical communication tools. And IT staff must provide proper support to make IT infrastructure operational. Employees sometimes need to update their hardware and security setups to meet company requirements. Companies often use unique platforms and apps that require orientation training.

Communication problems

Companies rely on organic ways to communicate this culture to new hires in an in person work environment. It’s best to send new employees electronic assets like laptops or phones well before their start date. Ensuring these devices are fully set up for remote work with the right company https://remotemode.net/blog/10-best-remote-onboarding-practices-to-adopt/ configurations can make your new hires more comfortable. Give every new employee a flying start with Personio’s automated onboarding software, trusted by 10,000+ happy customers across the UK and Europe. Onboarding is exactly the cultivating of new hires that Lazlo speaks about.

• Also, have a fail-safe in place in case technical issues arise during the onboarding process.
• For all new GitLab hires, we have created an onboarding issue template that has tasks to complete each day.
• The length of a new employee’s remote onboarding program can vary from a couple of weeks to over three months.
• Onboarding is the first impression a new hire gets of your organization.
• This new hire care package ensures that all new hires start on the same page, whether they’ll be working in-office or not.