How to manage remote employee onboarding

Employee onboarding is reshaping

We have all experienced the onboarding process as new hires at the company we are working with. Depending on the company, the employee onboarding takes various formats, but the purpose is the same: to get the employees acquainted with the team, the organisational structure and culture, the job requirements, in order to turn them from new hires into organizational members and insiders. 

And when you think that successfully managing an employee onboarding process is a challenge, COVID-19 pandemic struck and showed us that it can always get more challenging. A remote onboarding process can be really frustrating both for the employer and for the new hires, who are forced to get acquainted with their team behind their laptops. 

Social interaction is vital 

As you probably experienced yourself, social interaction is vital, especially at the beginning, when you feel like a stranger in the office. New hires tend to feel more confident when they are surrounded by their more experienced coworkers, whom they can ask a question or have a really quick brainstorming session with, in order to understand the business better. Also, it’s not only about asking questions, but also about fitting in and understanding the company culture from within. Thus, undoubtedly, social interaction is something to keep, even in an online environment. Or especially then. But how do you do that?

Remote employee onboarding plan

Take care of the technical stuff

Make sure that the new employees have access to their company email, their eLearning platform account and everything else they might need to have access to information and to be able to get in touch with the managers and the team. 

An interactive video presentation of the HR policies

eContent has proven to be so valuable when creating interactive presentations. You can include all sorts of information here, from HR policies, to a quick presentation of the team and an overview on the mandatory training sessions they’ll have to go through. And the interactivity aspect ensures a long-term retention of this information. Moreover, the video stays there, so it can be accessed any time. 

Social interactions

As we’ve mentioned before, you have to take into consideration the social part of the employee onboarding process. You can use the live streaming session available in a LMS to facilitate an introductory meeting with the management or with the team. Also, you can use the communities of practice tool, which virtually introduces the new hire to the community, where they can ask questions and talk to their colleagues. Another recommendation would be to assign a mentor to each new employee, a colleague who creates the bridge between him/her and the rest of the team, between his/her existent knowledge and how it could be put into practice in the current business environment. 

Feedback

Never underestimate the importance of getting feedback from the new employees and come up with various methods to facilitate this, such as completing surveys, coming up with recommendations, having a one to one conversation with the people in charge of the onboarding process. You can always use an eLearning platform to facilitate the feedback process, and moreover, it's always there when the employees feel like expressing their opinions and suggestions.