Before the global pandemic hit the world, the standard hiring process included scrutinizing through the large pile of resumes, interviewing potential candidates, and choosing the right candidate that fits your company goals and the job position.
Once hired, the new candidate arrived at the office to experience the in-person orientation experience and also engage with their team. This includes meeting the various key stakeholders and getting comfortable with the role or responsibilities.
Fast forward to the present day, the global pandemic has pushed organizations to work remotely. This has tremendously changed the new employee hiring process and thus onboarding. The standard procedure of handshakes, conference room meetings and talks has come to a halt. The overnight loss of such crucial elements in the onboarding can have a huge impact in the effectiveness of the onboarding process.
Organizations are put in a situation to rethink their company processes and come with creative yet effective ideas that make the onboarding process easy. Let’s look at some of the features that your remote new employee onboarding process must involve.
- Knowledge Transfer and Employee Training
Prior to the pandemic, in-person experiences contributed a key role to the success of familiarising the employee with the company and team processes or policies. However, these avenues are lost when companies move their workforce remotely.
HR Teams can solve this challenge by incorporating virtual buddy programs and setting up employee peer mentorship programs via online collaboration platforms. These interactions happening on communication platforms such as Zoom or Slack now replace the water cooler conversations that happened in the office scenario.
Helping the Employee Feel Part of the Team
The first days are memorable experiences since these are the first interactions employees have with their new teammates. When these experiences happened in-person prior to the pandemic, it was even more special since it involved many delightful experiences such as a team lunch or coffee chat.
Such delightful experiences that make the employee feel truly connected with the team can be recreated by incorporating ideas such as sending a company swag bag to the employee's address or a lunch gift card. Adding a personal gift note to these virtual gifts can go a long way in adding that personal touch to the employee experience.
Managing Onboarding Activities
There are many onboarding activities that involve the employee submitting documentation and also other internal stakeholders such as hiring managers, IT teams or office coordinators. As the workforce goes remote, it is essential to efficiently manage these tasks to ensure that the new employee starts their new role set up to succeed and thrive at their new role
Leveraging a digital onboarding system can help your team get insights on the progress in all of the onboarding activities and track open or overdue tasks.
For companies whose workforces have gone remote, these three tips will quickly help improve efficiency and engagement in the onboarding experience. At Squadsy, we have always believed that effective onboarding can significantly improve employee retention. As companies go remote, we’re helping them implement various strategies to create an amazing remote onboarding experience. Reach out to our team and we’re looking forward to working with you!