This would include digitizing essential documents and processes to make them accessible for your remote employees. However, with the right planning, the right software and the right attitude, you can save time and help your new employees make lasting connections. Follow these remote onboarding best practices and you’ll soon have a positive, hard-working and satisfied remote employee. Reduce confusion and help people feel at ease by creating and communicating a clear onboarding checklist.

• Employers need to provide their new employees with accurate insights into their company’s policies, procedures, and benefits.
• Welcoming new employees with company “swag” is also a nice touch (stationery, coffee mugs and company hoodies are all popular).
• You can still help them build strong connections with their teammates and your company as a whole—all you need is a bit of extra planning.
• Showing your appreciation is a simple, yet often neglected, way to motivate and engage your remote employees.

Consider providing a list of helpful bookmarks or setting up an onboarding-specific page with direct links to relevant content. Limit “required” content to the absolute essentials and some cultural flavor. Short Loom videos from other employees are a great way to make a positive first impression. It may be strange to think of remote work as a driver of inclusivity, but that’s exactly what it should be.

Onboarding Remote Employees? Here Are 5 Best Practices You Need to Know

Spend more time than you generally would in a face-to-face environment talking about what is typical and atypical across various cultural dimensions. Create the space for your new colleagues to ask about the way things are done as well. Using an LMS for onboarding makes it easy to automate training rollout. It also helps you and your employees keep track of their progress and ensures they get a consistently effective training experience. You also need to design your process to deliver a personal experience to help people feel welcome and at ease with your company culture. If an organization consists of multiple departments, it’s beneficial for a new hire to meet other colleagues they might be working with.

Carefully consider the new remote employee’s skill set and what training they may need to fill knowledge gaps. Insist that trainers adhere to punctuality so the trainee feels valued. Query the employee soon after their training and welcome their feedback.

Create a shared “questions” document

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. “The anxiety someone can feel when starting a new job is https://remotemode.net/blog/10-best-remote-onboarding-practices-to-adopt/ always exacerbated by not knowing the key details,” says Jonah. Here are some fundamentals to guide you in developing your own comprehensive checklist so that nothing falls through the cracks when onboarding a new hire. Be sure to add software where needed to speed processes and provide the required legal or audit trails.

These topics don’t require group discussion, so they’re perfectly suited for e-learning courses new hires can take on their own. What’s more, moving these general knowledge topics to self-service takes the burden off trainers and facilitators, who can better focus on the more intensive topics in group learning sessions. Have the recruiter ask for the candidate’s sizing info, and then send your new hire wearable swag like t-shirts or backpacks, and other useful branded items like a water bottle or gift card. Joining a new organization can be intimidating, especially if the employee is new to the work arrangements required of the role in your DLC.

Ship the Hardware Before Day One

Creating connections within and across remote onboarding groups sets up everyone for success. Well-planned group learning activities help new hires establish relationships they can use later on, such as collaborating on cross-departmental projects. Social connections also give remote workers more channels to find information outside of their own teams. By making a well-executed onboarding process, you can be sure that you’re setting your new team members up to be successful. That being said, building a program that drives that positive impact can be challenging. That’s why we talked with 10 professionals about their best tips for a successful onboarding process for remote workers.

Since employees make so many judgments about their new job during their first few weeks and months, you want to make sure that this experience is excellent for them. As we talked about last week, adding video into your routine while working remotely is vital. As part of all these virtual meetings we’ve mentioned, make sure to set some time away for some fun icebreaker activities. You can have your new hires play a game such as Pictionary or Words With Friends, and have a Slack channel to share Spotify playlists and funny videos…your imagination is the only limit. Have your new employees work on a project together during the onboarding process.

Start Things Off Right with the Perfect Welcome Email

People experience information overload and can’t retain everything they’ve learned. Without the space to digest and internalize new information, new remote employees become frustrated and can’t ramp up effectively. When you integrate Calendly and Docusign with Zapier, you can easily add documents to your pre-hire meetings and collect signatures. There’s no risk of starting the onboarding process without knowing if a new hire has completed their paperwork — Calendly and DocuSign tell you whether it’s done. When onboarding a new employee, it’s good to set clear goals to keep new hires from feeling lost or overwhelmed.

We send everyone a $20 Grubhub gift card and use this meeting to get to know each other outside of what was on the resume. We ask questions like, “If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would that be?” We may also play two truths and a lie. The goal is to ensure they’re settling into their role and feel like they’re part of the team. https://remotemode.net/ You can set them up for success from the start by taking the time to onboard them properly. It’s common to begin onboarding on an employee’s first day, but think about it—onboarding really starts with the very first recruiting contact, not on Day 1 of the job. By the time the employee starts work, expectations are already formed in their mind.