With COVID-19 meaning that many businesses have staff working remotely and from home, onboarding new staff has become a challenge.
When it comes to onboarding, it’s an integral start to someone’s journey within your company. It’s the first official impression of your business and is usually done in the office and face to face. Usually, the onboarding process includes face to face meetings, group sessions, meeting the team and looking around the office facilities.
As you can imagine, a remote onboarding session could be particularly daunting for a new employee, especially as it’s missing the more hands-on approach.
So the question is: Are you prepared for onboarding remote teams?
Paperwork: Helpful tools such as DocuSign can help when it comes to signing contracts and other paperwork you’re required to get employees to sign. They are legitimate and legally binding, making it a breeze when it comes to official paperwork.
Equipment: It’s important to make sure that your new member of staff has everything that they need. Preparing this at least a month in advance is advisable.
Face to face time: Having your new member of staff be included in virtual morning meetings, being introduced over Zoom, Teams or Slack, and providing them with all the tools to contact other staff members is imperative to keep the connectedness.
Training sessions: If you need to provide staff with training sessions, rather than have them read a document and navigate it themselves, it’s worth creating training videos that are more interactive or doing it live with them on a screen share. This way any complications or questions that arise can be dealt with then and there.
A Buddy: Assigning a member of the team to be a new starters buddy can really help them socialise and feel involved with the wider team. This could consist of regular check-ins, calls and swapping messages.
Overall, it’s important to consider how you approach your onboarding processes and making sure they translate well to the virtual setting.