How To Achieve Successful Remote Employee Onboarding

A comprehensive and engaging onboarding is the best thing you can offer your employees on the first day they walk through your office doors. But what happens when they work remotely and never get to interact with their colleagues and supervisors face-to-face? Does that have to diminish their onboarding experience? Of course not. Remote employees are as valuable as on-site personnel and must receive a proper welcome to their new job. In this guide, we share a thorough remote employee onboarding checklist to help you make sure your new remote additions get off to a great start.

What Is Remote Employee Onboarding?

The overall purpose of remote onboarding doesn’t differ from in-person onboarding. It still aims to introduce employees to their new workplace, helping them delve into its values, mission and vision, their new role, the tasks and responsibilities that come with it, the tools, resources, and available facilities of the company, as well as their colleagues. The only difference lies in the way remote onboarding is carried out. In-person chats, training sessions, and around-the-office shadowing are replaced by video conferences, online messaging, prerecorded videos, and other types of digital material. With the help of technology, virtual onboarding can be just as effective as in-person and offer new employees a great first impression.

Why Is Onboarding So Important For Remote Employees?

Providing your workforce with a satisfactory onboarding experience is of utmost importance for the success of your organization. A study proved that when employees have a positive experience during their first 90 days of employment, they are ten times more likely to stay compared to those who have a poor one. A well-designed onboarding strategy will make new employees feel appreciated and supported during their first steps at a new job. Additionally, their new employer’s investment in welcoming them and setting them on a path of success will foster trust and motivate them to work hard. All in all, remote onboarding will set the tone for the future and significantly increase the odds of a long and fruitful collaboration between the employee and employer.

Challenges With Remote Employee Onboarding

Virtual onboarding comes with a set of challenges that you have to be aware of if you want to achieve optimal results. Let’s see what those are.

Uncertainty Regarding Onboarding Timelines

A primary challenge in remote employee onboarding is establishing clear timelines. Being significantly far from your place of work can impede communication or cause delays in receiving equipment or important paperwork. At times, there are differences in time zones, which can complicate the coordination of onboarding activities, such as meetings and training sessions. Challenges like these can keep new hires from diving into their tasks and responsibilities early on and achieving a satisfactory level of productivity. Not to mention they can cause uncertainty and an overall underwhelming or outright negative onboarding experience.

Handling Access Credentials And Permissions Effectively

One of the first things that happens when you start a new job is receiving the credentials for your work email and other specific profiles you need to complete your tasks. While this task is fairly straightforward in in-person onboarding, it becomes more complicated remotely. Organizations must figure out how to share this information with the employee’s location in a secure and timely manner. Failing to do so can leave new hires without access to important tools and resources and, ultimately, directionless during the first and most crucial weeks of onboarding.

Insufficient Technical And Administrative Support

As employees learn how to use company tools and platforms, it’s highly possible that they will require support from the IT staff, their superiors, or fellow team members. While this is usually quick and easy in the office, it can take significantly longer for remote employees. At times, they don’t even know who to address to voice an issue or concern. To prevent work schedule disruptions and unnecessary stress, organizations must have robust communication and support systems to ensure timely and effective guidance for their employees.

Challenges In Communication

Continuing in the same direction as the previous challenge, effective communication can make or break a remote onboarding experience. Organizations often struggle to stay in touch with their new hires, tiptoeing between micromanagement and disengagement. Finding a balance is crucial as you don’t want to overwhelm employees but also don’t want them to feel forgotten and isolated. Utilizing various communication channels, such as video calls, emails, and messaging, as well as team-building activities, will help you maintain a connection with your employees and foster a sense of belonging and community.

Using Outdated Onboarding Materials

When creating a remote onboarding strategy, you must also think about the materials you will be using. Firstly, you must move away from paper or training sessions that can only take place in the office. Make sure to digitize documents, training modules, and handbooks so that remote employees can receive them no matter where they are. Moreover, you must add any information that they will find useful and relevant when working remotely. This will enhance the onboarding experience and better prepare new hires for their roles.

Providing Cybersecurity Training

Cybersecurity is a critical part of the onboarding process, especially for remote employees who need to access company systems from various devices and locations. Being away from the office and the guidance of their colleagues and IT team, remote employees can unintentionally expose your organization to numerous cyber threats. For this reason, it’s essential that you provide them with cybersecurity training to educate them on the best practices of secure remote work. Don’t forget to provide regular updates on security protocols so that employees can refresh their knowledge and remain compliant.

6 Tips For Onboarding Remote Employees

Despite the unique challenges of remote onboarding, there are some tips you can follow to ensure a seamless and engaging experience for your remote employees.

1. Opt For Appropriate Software Investments

Considering that remote onboarding takes place entirely online, the tools you will use for communication, collaboration, project management, training, etc., are of utmost importance. Platforms such as Slack or Asana will help you remain in constant communication with your new hires and guide them through the various onboarding steps. There are also numerous options for employee onboarding software, which will facilitate keeping track of onboarding stages and employee progress.

2. Start Mentorship Programs

Starting a new job can be confusing, especially when you can’t just turn to a colleague sitting next to you for help. This is why you must establish mentorship programs to ensure the success of your remote onboarding strategy. Assign each new hire a mentor who will be responsible for answering questions, explaining tools, and offering overall support. Apart from helping employees get the hang of their position and its responsibilities, it will also help them establish relationships with their coworkers and accelerate their integration into the team.

3. Share Your Company Handbook

The company handbook is an essential and comprehensive document that includes everything an employee needs to know about your company’s policies, values, and procedures. You can share it with new hires before their first day at work to give them a better understanding of what working for you will look like. Make sure that the handbook is up to date and available for viewing from multiple devices. This way, it will be easily accessible to employees not only during the preboarding phase but also in the future.

4. Clarify Employee Roles And Responsibilities

Establishing clarity over a new employee’s role and responsibilities is essential for achieving successful onboarding and integration into your organization’s workforce. Often, employees are only left with the job description that was given during the interview stage, which can cause uncertainty and stress, not to mention reduced productivity. Sharing details regarding short and long-term goals, project outlines, and KPIs can motivate employees, align them with organizational goals, and help them better understand their contribution to the team.

5. Boost Productivity With Support

New hires are expected to need more guidance and support during the first weeks or months of their employment. This can range from technical assistance with tools and platforms to administrative guidance on understanding benefits or company policies. It’s important for managers to dedicate enough time to their team members and establish various communication channels to encourage questions and reduce frustration. If you combine this with regular check-ins, new hires will feel adequately supported during the crucial time of onboarding and will make valuable contributions to their team in no time.

6. Create A Thorough Evaluation Process

The final tip for successful and engaging remote employee onboarding is carefully evaluating their progress. There are various techniques you can use to achieve that, from regular performance reviews to feedback sessions and self-assessments. Establishing a well-organized and comprehensive evaluation framework will help you identify areas for improvement before they seriously impact your new addition’s professional development. At the same time, it will facilitate recognizing and rewarding achievements, giving employees an extra moral boost.

Remote Employee Onboarding Checklist

Clarifying the steps of the remote onboarding process will help you develop an effective experience that will help your employees quickly maximize their productivity.

Develop A 90-Day Plan For Employee Onboarding

It is best to have a comprehensive idea of the first three months of your new hire’s employment. During this time period, you must ensure that they receive continuous support in the form of regular meetings with their mentor and/or manager, training, and team-building activities. It’s also important to set long-term objectives that will help their professional growth.

Distribute An Initial Resource Pack Or Welcome Kit

Giving new employees a welcome kit during preboarding can significantly impact their impression of your company and their enthusiasm to start working with you. This can include company swag, a welcome email, and a brief overview of the onboarding process. Apart from that, include some starter resources, such as an employee handbook, any paperwork they need to fill in, and an overview of the company culture, values, and mission.

Outline Communication Channels

Communication is essential for all employees, specifically for those working remotely. Employees who work from home must know which communication channels their colleagues use so that they can reach out to them easily. Make sure to set up their account before or on their first day of work, at the latest.

Strategize For Their First Day

The first day at a new job is usually a whirlwind for new employees and managers alike. To prevent forgetting any steps due to your busy schedule, you must list them out. Specifically, the first day must start with welcoming new employees, helping them set up their various accounts, and reviewing the schedule for the first week.

Arrange A Virtual “Get To Know” Gathering

The lack of face-to-face interaction can make it harder for remote employees to feel like part of the team. Therefore, you must kickstart the integration process by setting up virtual coffee breaks or team-building activities. You can also include the new hires in team meetings and projects so that they can familiarize themselves with the company culture.

Facilitate Training Sessions

Training can be a challenging process for remote employees if they don’t have the necessary tools. This is why you must invest in the right Learning Management Systems to organize and roll out your training courses. Additionally, you must make training flexible by allowing remote employees to access it at any time and from more devices than one. Finally, digital handbooks and guides will ensure the training process is smooth and efficient.

Schedule Routine Check-Ins

Finally, a significant step you need to include in your remote employee onboarding checklist is establishing regular progress monitoring. Onboarding can set the tone for the new employee’s professional development journey, so you must ensure its success. Regularly check your employees’ performance, the progress of onboarding, the training modules that have been completed, success rates, and so on.

Conclusion

Remote employee onboarding may sound like a daunting task for many, but it doesn’t have to be this way. As long as you organize and stick to your onboarding strategy, you will be able to offer new hires a fulfilling and effective onboarding experience that will set them on a path to professional success. In this guide, we explored the challenges of remote onboarding, tips to overcome them, as well as a comprehensive remote employee onboarding checklist. Armed with this information, you should be able to maximize the effectiveness of your onboarding strategy.