Employee onboarding: a part of the hiring process that’s always been incredibly important as far as engagement and retention — and it’s even more important now that many of us are doing it remotely. But, it doesn’t have to feel overwhelming! We’ve uncovered four impactful tips to create great onboarding remote employee onboarding experiences for your new team members:
Spreading out onboarding to avoid new hire fatigue
When the pandemic hit, Kelly Chuck, a learning partner at LinkedIn who creates content for LinkedIn’s onboarding program, expanded the company’s onboarding regiment from one day or a weeklong virtual program. She thought shorter bursts of learning spread out over the week would allow flexibility, especially if new hires were juggling other responsibilities.
The remote employee onboarding program included regular check-ins and touchpoints to make sure new hires didn’t feel overlooked or forgotten (we especially loved the idea of the scavenger hunt with LinkedIn’s online resources on Day 4).
Self-service technology set-up
It’s a familiar story — it’s one thing to ship a laptop to an employees’ house, but it’s another to have the employee actually set up their equipment, especially if the company’s IT department is overwhelmed in tending to its usual log of cases from other remote employees!
Two things might help here — creating a series of videos new hires can log into to troubleshoot the easier stuff, and (again borrowing from LinkedIn), creating a way for employees to upload company-specific software programs remotely. LinkedIn goes through the upload process as part of an hour-long, one-on-one phone session provided for each new hire.
Use creative ways to engage new employees
The best — and most engaging — processes are those that remember there’s a social side to onboarding. One idea is to utilize the functionality within Zoom — asking questions via chat, polling employees on virtual sessions, and creating breakout sessions so new hires can get to know one another during a break in their remote employee onboarding training.
Think beyond a week — and get new employee feedback on your onboarding efforts
ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform that manages digital workflows, conducted a study in 2019 and found that employee enthusiasm for work peaks at the start of a new job but decreases by 22% shortly after. To combat that, many companies are starting to extend their employee onboarding efforts to be a few weeks long, giving new hires the opportunity for meet-and-greets, additional training, and social events.
Employee feedback is also a gift when it comes to learning and improving virtual onboarding efforts. New hires at ServiceNow, for example, are surveyed after one week about the quality of their own onboarding and again at 45 days.
Want to learn more about creating a great remote employee onboarding experience? It’s just the kind of stuff we LOVE talking about. Drop us a line here.