Onboarding is an important part of bringing new employees up to speed on how things are done at your firm. While this has traditionally been quite easy, the growth in remote work recently has made things more challenging in some cases. There is more to think about and things like distance and time change can be difficult.
Of course, today there are many pieces of software that can help ease and simplify the process. Some of the best can be learned about here: 13 Top Employee Onboarding Software for New Hires in 2021 – GoCo.io. They can simplify the process, and ensure it goes off without a hitch.
However, in addition to the software used, there are some tactics you should employ in order to ensure remote onboarding goes as smoothly as possible for all new hires. With that in mind, let’s go over a few tips for the successful onboarding of remote workers.
Introduce Them to the Team
When a person joins a new company in a traditional manner, they will be naturally introduced to team members and how things work in the office over time. Slowly they will get more face-to-face time with their coworkers and build better relationships.
However, if they work remotely, they won’t get that chance. As a result, it is up to you to provide the proper introduction and opportunities to communicate with their team members. Get your existing team members to reach out, and make things easy for everyone to stay in touch and collaborate.
Many remote workers can feel isolated, so make an effort to get them involved as best as possible. Be sure they feel welcomed and know they have a support system that is there to help them. This also gives you a great chance to get them up to speed when it comes to company culture.
Communicate Everything Clearly
Communication is crucial in business, and this is especially true with remote employees during onboarding. You need to be open and transparent about what the process will look like, and what is expected of everyone involved. If you leave things out, it could lead to issues and problems with the onboarding, or their performance at work.
Explain everything well, and never leave any gap in communication that could lead to confusion. It can often be good to set up a timeline or roadmap, as well. In addition to communicating things early like duties, roles, and expectations, communication will continue to be important going forward. Also, if unique tools for communication are used, ensure all remote workers are comfortable using them.
Ask for Feedback and be Open to Questions
If your company is still relatively new to hiring and onboarding remote employees, your process and tactics might not be as fine-tuned as they should be. There may be some questionable issues that arise that negatively impact the process. These types of issues are often expensive, and often quite stressful for both sides to navigate through.
You need to be sure to ask for feedback throughout the process on things that could be done differently or better. This has the potential to save you a lot of time and money in the future when onboarding remote employees. Also, this can help a remote worker feel more comfortable asking questions without worry about being judged.
We hope that this blog post has been able to help you learn how to successfully onboard remote employees. It can take some fine-tuning to get correct, but a solid onboarding process is crucial to getting remote workers to reach their full potential.
