Every business wants to have an excellent onboarding process, it just guarantees your starters have access to everything they’ll need to succeed.
After all, ensuring new hires adjust to the social and professional expectations of their new work environment will allow both the wider business, as well as the new hire, to work as productively as possible, as quickly as possible.
However, when onboarding becomes remote, the usual tried-and-tested processes can often become redundant and unless you’ve made an international hire before, remote onboarding may be a brand-new but absolutely necessary challenge for you to overcome.
How We Perfected Remote Onboarding
At SourceBreaker, remote onboarding is a practice we have been successfully carrying out since the heights of remote working, dating back to our then new account manager, Harry.
Located in Australia during the interview process with his first day being the same one the entire nation had started working from home, Harry was about as remote as you could be when the pandemic started back in 2020.
Whilst this process has certainly required us to adapt to some extent, we knew from the outset that it was a challenge that would allow us to keep progressing during this period, all while adapting and picking up new skills and procedures.
Now, Harry is comfortably settled into the ins and outs of the business and his remote onboarding has been successfully replicated for dozens of SourceBreaker employees.
So how did we do it, what remote onboarding tips can we share, and how can you make progress with Remote Onboarding?
1. First Impressions Are Crucial
You’ve heard it before but it’s true.
What you’re able to do to build engagement and excitement before a hire has even started can absolutely transform the enthusiasm new starters bring into the company.
In many businesses, considerable time and effort is put into first impressions and first-day desk setups are frequently shared across social media and this doesn’t need to be any different for remote onboarding.
Think about what they’ll need to succeed.
Are there relevant reading items we can send the new starter before they officially start? Is there information about your business that can get them pumped, and bridge the gap between the offer and their start date?
And when it comes to the first day, have we thought about the setup they will need? In Harry’s case, we made sure to send out all of his tech items, such as his laptop and headset, directly to his in preparation for his first day.
2. Promote & Instil Company Culture
For many businesses – and certainly at SourceBreaker – culture is a huge part of who we are as a business but when working virtually, it can be easy to lose that impact.
As a company expands and starts to hire remote employees, they can often find their culture is unable to evolve in the process but culture is just as important as your team’s day-to-day responsibilities.
That’s why we also made sure we included a SourceBreaker hoodie in Harry’s start-up pack, wanting to ensure that his experience was as close to being in the office as remotely possible.
A sense of company culture can be cultivated in remote employees through coaching, mentoring, and even a simple buddy system — because who better to instil the culture than your biggest culture advocates, your existing team?
We, therefore, ensured that Harry was paired with someone who we see as a great representation of our culture.
3. Personable Introductions & Face-to-Face Time
Meeting in person is traditionally the easiest way to nurture a healthy professional relationship but when that’s not a viable option, the next best thing is a virtual video call.
Not only does this give both your existing team and new hires an opportunity to get to know one another but allows for a bigger communication buy-in from your hire as you become more than just a name or a voice and instead a person.
4. Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Looking back at any new job, first-day memories are often made up of the people you interact with and remote onboarding should follow a similar trajectory.
In the office, SourceBreaker runs ‘coffee and catch-ups’, an opportunity for every new employee to catch up with every member of the senior leadership team, meaning no one is a stranger regardless of what team you’re in.
With remote onboarding, this should be no different, scheduling in video calls to allow new team members to get to know the team.
At SourceBreaker whole-team lunches are also put in place for every new employee’s first day in the office, and with the power of video conferencing, these again can be recreated. These social opportunities give the new starter a better sense of the team dynamic but also helps keep the team operating effectively by making sure they’re looped in.
All in all, one key aspect to any successful work environment is allowing new hires to ‘experience the office’ regardless of where they are located — and this is an even bigger priority when onboarding remotely.
5. Set Clear Expectations & Company Guidelines
Another crucial part of any first day in a new role is understanding your new position and so laying out clear expectations of the role, the working hours, and any additional context on how the company functions are vital for ensuring a new hire’s success.
Having a clear set time to start and finish, as well as an understanding of what output is expected during that is, therefore, important. With remote onboarding, this is perhaps even more important as there is an added freedom in a home office and so if clear expectations are set, there won’t be any confusion as to what’s expected of the new employee or the team they’ve joined.
By circumventing these awkward mistakes with information, your starter can focus on what really matters — the tasks at hand and meshing effectively with the wider team.
6. Initiate Professional Development
As with expectations, training is just as – if not significantly more – important when away from the office. According to a TalentLMS survey, while 87% of remote workers receive training, 67% say they still need more.
This is important when you remember how much of the way your business works, how your product is presented, and the dynamics of your people can be absorbed just by being in the office.
We call this ‘training by osmosis’ because employees get to know your company’s language and the way you do things just by being physically present.
Being away from the office means no communication should be taken for granted; every conversation matters.
7. Provide Cultural Enablement Resources
The great thing about remote onboarding is that any onboarding collateral your business has spent the time to compile will become more valuable than ever.
Ensuring you have digitised all existing employee documentation, handbooks, and relevant information on company culture is particularly important.
At SourceBreaker, making sure new hires know the story of the business from inception is really valuable in giving the team a true sense of not only the culture but the core purpose of the product itself.
8. Encourage Collaboration Early-On
Working in a group on any kind of project introduces team members, cross-trains teams and ultimately, forges bonds. This can be an extremely valuable tool in not just situating a new employee in the business in terms of culture, but can also be an extremely valuable tool when it comes to training.
For Harry, we ensured he has had involvement with all areas of the commercial team even in his first couple of weeks.
9. Extra organisation
Any hiring process requires you to be organised but remote hiring requires it tenfold. When onboarding a virtual team member, it can be easy to lose track of what’s yet to be done.
The ‘shadow-me-for-a-day approach’ unfortunately doesn’t cut it for remote working, so every hour of the first week needs careful planning to accommodate everyone’s schedule.
At SourceBreaker, it’s been incredibly valuable to keep detailed outlines of everything needed from new employees on a shared document, so we can keep track of the process together.
10. How do they ask for help?
The final and possibly more vital tip, is to place a particular focus on the mediums new employee’s and starters can ask questions, share their thoughts, and offer feedback.
The first few weeks are always a huge learning curve, with a million pieces of information being thrown at a new starter and the ability to ask the person beside them for quick tidbits of information has been taken from them. On top of that, new hires also don’t always want to be asking their manager something they feel they should have already been shown.
To combat this, we recommend new hires have access to people across all the relevant departments who are always happy to help.
Giving them access to these members of the team and showing them you’re dedicated to their success is how your culture really shines.
TL;DR Key Takeaways
- Building excitement before the new hire starts is crucial; consider sending reading items or information about the company before the first day.
- Company culture is important and can be instilled in remote employees through coaching, mentoring, and a buddy system.
- Use video calls to make personable introductions and allow new hires to get to know the team.
- Schedule in video calls to allow new team members to get to know their teammates, and recreate social opportunities, such as team lunches, via video conferencing.
- Clearly lay out expectations of the role, working hours, and how the company functions for ensuring a new hire’s success.
- Provide support through the buddy system, including assigning a mentor to ensure that employees have a point of contact to ask questions and address any issues.
- Invest in technology and tools to ensure that remote employees have access to all necessary resources and feel supported.
- Communicate frequently and openly to create a sense of inclusion and belonging.
- Regular check-ins and feedback can help to identify any issues and create a sense of engagement and motivation for remote employees.
- Celebrate successes and milestones to help create a sense of community, inclusion, and accomplishment for remote employees.
