The world around us, our personal lives, and the way we do business have all changed dramatically in only a matter of a few months.
As employees continue working remotely and businesses get back the grip on their revenue, the need for hiring new resources is starting to become prominent again.
While remotely finding, screening, interviewing, and hiring new employees is a challenge in itself, once you overcome it, you will be presented with another challenge- onboarding new employees in a virtual environment.
Despite the availability of tools like HRIS platforms, collaboration tools, and web conferencing software, onboarding a new resource remotely can be a confusing challenge.
Here are a few ways you can improve the quality of your onboarding process for remote resources:
Make Pre-Boarding A Habit
Organization is the key to optimizing any online processes that involve multiple contributors. In the case of an onboarding process, the importance of organization is paramount to ensuring productivity from day 1.
To do this, one of the most common strategies is to have a pre boarding process in place. With a pre boarding process, you can sort out all the HR documentation required by your organization a day before the actual joining date.
This way, you can quickly finish the documentation part of the onboarding process on the joining day and move on to the rest of the steps involved in the onboarding process without wasting any time.
Train Using The Right Tools
Training new employees is a big and significant part of any well-developed onboarding program. Even where technical training is not required, it is still a good idea to develop a short training program or module to help new employees understand how things work at your organization.
Thankfully, there are a variety of affordable and easy to use e-learning tools that you can use to create an engaging online learning experience for the new resources at your organization. You can also share this training material with them using the various online learning platforms available today.
The best online learning platforms even offer the ability to track a learner’s progress, something that can come in handy to ensure your training is actually driving the benefits you want from an employee training initiative.
Prioritize Face To Face Communication
Face to face communication often takes a backseat in a virtual environment. After all, why schedule a Zoom meeting when you can communicate the same things with an email.
While this may be true for day to day office communications, the importance of face to face communications with new recruits should not be overlooked. These folks are new to your organization and in all probability, are also new to joining an organization in a virtual environment.
As a result, there is an equally good chance that they are confused in their initial days. To uplift this communication and to let them know that there are people they can reach out to without hesitation, face to face communications are important.
Set Clear Expectations
Finally, with new employees and their managers both working remotely, there can easily be instances when the new resource does not know what they are supposed to do with their day.
Sure, such situations don’t usually last more than a few days but it does have a negative influence over the overall productivity of the team.
To avoid this, make sure your HR department coordinates with the concerned managers about expectation setting and task assignment right after the onboarding process is completed.
Conclusion
A positive onboarding experience can ensure that new employees have a continued positive experience with your organization. After all, first impressions matter. We hope that these tips will help you improve the effectiveness of your virtual onboarding process.