8 Steps to Remote Employee Onboarding for Employers

Even in the best of times, onboarding new employees can be challenging for many organizations. If you look back, you’ll know how it feels on the very first day at a new job. New faces with unfamiliar surroundings and technologies. These factors can be overwhelming for both employers and employees.

The remote hiring process requires the best remote employee onboarding practices. Whether you’re operating a temporary remote team due to a pandemic or a remote-first company, you can have a smooth workflow with this practice. You can accomplish an efficient process by practicing your remote onboarding strategy.

1. Start with Pre-Boarding

Your first day at a job can be exciting but scary too. Yet you look forward to learning new things and opportunities to grow. For a remote team, the employees don’t have the same stress, but things are difficult in other ways. Some employees can feel discounted from other team members in remote work, even if there are communication tools.

The best way to make new employees less overwhelmed and more welcomed is to give them a pre-onboarding package like email, notebook, etc. Introduce new hiring with other team members and make them aware of your company’s hierarchy.

2. Provide Important Information and Document

Create a document in a digital version which contains necessary information like a handbook of rule and regulations, policies, culture decks, company’s vision, systems, etc. These digital resources help new remote employees to understand the company’s expectations. Once the vision and expectations are clear, they can lay a foundation and fit-in with others.

For one step further, make a video and share it with the document every time you are onboarding a remote employee. These videos might be more effective as compared to documents.

3. Get their Setup Ready

If there’s a need to deliver or order any device for remote work, try to get it done as soon as possible. This might be a bit complicated while dealing with the remote hiring process. It’s because every individual employee lives in a different location. Some of them are a few hours away, and others are days away. So, you list down their location and get the necessary equipment delivered.

Moreover, see what your new hire requires. They could be needing a keyboard, cables, mouse, monitor, laptop, etc. Make a checklist for your new hiring and ask them to fill it accordingly. Their onboarding can take time or get too delayed due to the absence of any appropriate equipment. It may be an exhausting start for your company, but it’ll pay off in the future.

Provide them thorough instructions regarding what are the relevant apps or tools they’ll need for the job. You can also give them a guide that will help them learn each tool. Create their business account or email and make sure it is working properly. Lastly, add their emails to the company’s mailing lists, email chains, and other communication channels like slack.

4. Make a Personalized Onboarding Plan

For some companies, it may be difficult to build a personal connection with a remote employee. Not meeting with any of them face-to-face, it could be tough for both of you to know each other. This can make your new hires feel uncomfortable and lost.

By developing a personalized onboarding plan, you can make every individual of them welcomed. Sometimes things may overlap because creating a personal touch in your planning for every individual is pretty hard. So, before personalizing your plan, make sure you know your remote hiring.

Break down your onboarding process into stages, like; what types of meetings they’ll have or with whom they will engage.

What’s the motive of each meeting? At the beginning of your plan, you can schedule their meeting calendar for them. It’ll help them focus and eliminate stressful feelings.

5. Ready your Training Plan

Wasting time is easy for employees when they’re working from home. They have distractions like their favorite TV show, hobbies, family, focus on a particular task can get a bit challenging. It’s simpler for new hiring who are unaware of the workflow hierarchy.

Consider creating a training plan to help new employees work on task; make sure you don’t miss any significant step while onboarding them. A training plan also allows you to remain on top of expectations and keep both employee and employer on the right path. However, there might be several company documents and policies, but you can be specific about every individual’s job with a training plan.

While constructing a training plan, begin your planning with some prioritizations. Like what’s the most important thing new hiring should learn? Some of them need to learn specific software, and few hires require a piece of in-depth knowledge about the company’s services or products. You can determine all the training priorities for every individual that will help them work faster.

6. Clear Expectations & Set Goals

To check-in time and in-office routine and monitor employees’ working hours is simple. Likewise, it’s convenient for employees too; they can check whether they are expecting any meeting or not. But in remote working, you rarely get these opportunities.

During the remote employee onboarding procedure, start with clearing the company’s expectations and goals. They must know what they must achieve in the first week, at the end of the month, and in the first 90 days. Try to clear and define these expectations as much as possible. If you fail to do so, add qualifiers, measurable metrics, or numbers to show the recruits the company’s required target numbers/digits. This way, they will keep on improving productivity and efficiently reach the company’s expectations. Also, create a platform and opportunities for all sorts of feedback.

7. Introduce Remote Employees with Team Members

To build a strong organizational culture means you’ve to create opportunities for new employees to connect with other team members. Even outside the traditional office environment, there should be days when everyone connects. Obviously, in the office, you just have to cater to lunches, happy hours, or events to introduce a new employee.

When things and routines are different in remote work, then the introduction approach will be different too. There will be times when you find it a bit tough, but you need to connect the new employee with the team.

So, what should you do? How about scheduling a digital event? You can play pictorial games at this event and introduce new hires. Make a quick introductory call with the relevant team or department.

8. Schedule Frequent Check-Ins

While working from home, it’s convenient to communicate as much as you can instead of under-communication. Scheduling everyday check-ins and meetings might feel a bit pointless, but it’ll prevent your new remote employees from feeling detached. You must monitor check-in among new employees and their HR, managers, and teams in such scenarios. Seek opportunities to get check-ins of new hires with their peers.

Right before any meeting, aware your employees of the context of the meeting. This way, they’ll come well-prepared with their own requests, feedback, and questions. It can also be an opportunity for them to speak and involve more by responding well. If you wish to maintain a balance between check-ins efficiently, then avoid micromanaging.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a new company or an enterprise-level organization, remote hiring costs will be reasonable for you. Here in Aspired, we have many talented, skill-full, and experienced resources for you. Many organizations across the globe are leveraging from our remote team. Our remote hiring process may look a bit lengthy, but it’s effective for your business.

Onboarding remote employees for the long-term is crucial for us. Due to which we train them, connect with them frequently, and provide a remote-friendly workplace. Our motive is to provide you a team that is enthusiastic, competitive, and proactive.