Provide a Positive Onboarding Experience, Even When Everyone’s Working Remotely
Onboarding can be an exciting part of an employee’s journey in the organisation. After passing a thorough pre-employment screening and selection process, the new hire is now expected to learn and settle into their new role. But with the pandemic affecting every aspect of a business, employers need to be creative in how to onboard new employees who will be working remotely, temporarily or permanently.
Considering the limitations of working remotely, here are some tips to how to effectively onboard new hires:
Onboard new hires creatively
At Spotify, they send new hire welcome messages in the form of a playlist. This is a creative way to immerse the hire into the organisation in a manner that is unique to Spotify. Creative forms of welcoming new hires can greatly increase engagement, reduce stress, and boost affinity to your employer brand.
Communicate expectations.
Good candidate experience is not just important during screening and selection but should also extend up to onboarding. Make sure that you can communicate everything that they can expect from day 1 of the job up until they can be on their own two feet on the job or even beyond.
Give them a virtual tour.
Ideally, the new hire will be given a tour of the workplace from day 1 of the job. But with a remote work set up, the best option is a virtual tour. And virtual tours can come in many forms. From actual video tours of the office to a pseudo tour of the virtual work environment (i.e. apps) and how to use your company’s remote work tools for collaboration. Nevertheless, the goal is to provide a good understanding of where they need to go for whatever they need — whether online in your shared folders or physically when everyone is back working at the office.
Highlight your company culture.
During the new hire orientation, it is also ideal to emphasise the company culture. As much as possible, take time to explain the core values, mission, and vision of the company. Ideally, new hires should be able to participate in shared activities as soon as possible to immerse themselves in the way things are done in the company and introduce them to their colleagues.
Involve them in smaller teams.
With the limitations of physical distancing and remote work set up, new hires need to be assimilated into the work groups fast. By initially placing them in smaller teams, they can quickly build working relationships faster and then later slowly expand their internal network to more people in the organisation. The pandemic may have unprecedented impacts on every business in the world today but being creative is limitless. Through technology, making new hires feel more welcome and engaged can still be possible.
This article first appeared on Talegent website:
https://talegent.com/blog/provide-a-onboarding-experience-even-when-everyones-working-remotely/
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