Having an onboarding process mapped out is a good move for many reasons. Good onboarding practices save time and headaches by conveying expectations immediately and providing answers as soon as your new employee has questions.
Onboarding is especially important for remote employees, who may feel more isolated from their team and the business than in-person employees. Luckily, good onboarding practices can help bridge those gaps and build those connections.
Whether you’re creating a new onboarding process from scratch or just looking for tips to ensure integration and lasting success with your new hire, this guide has you covered.
Pre-onboarding preparations
Setting expectations
Setting expectations and making them easy for your new hire to understand is paramount to their success in any workplace onboarding. Clear expectations are even more important when onboarding a remote employee, as they can’t just pop into your office and ask clarifying questions. Plus, clarity ensures they do the work correctly when unsupervised.
If you haven’t already, take a bit of time to write out your expectations, explaining why and how they support your business’s mission. Plan to send this to your new employee, ideally before their onboarding date. These explanations will clarify to the new hire why they’re being asked to do what you’re asking them to do and may begin to connect them with the work and your business.
Preparing tools and resources
First, make sure you send tools and resources to your new hires before their start date to minimize technical issues. If there is login information they need to use, send it along as well (and make it clear which login information goes with which tool). Choose a day (or stretch of days) where you know you—or the person managing IT—will have some availability so you can solve any login or account problems quickly.
If available, also consider sending along tutorials. Tutorials can speed up the process of acclimating to new workplace tools.
While you’re getting things ready to onboard your new employee, it’s also a good time to review your data management processes, strengthen any weak points, or update information where applicable. This way, your new hire won’t run into any snags (and your team will thank you, too!).
Communication setup
When reviewing the onboarding process, consider what types of communication your team uses and for what purpose. Clearly outline these differences in the onboarding literature so there won’t be any mix-ups. With any new employee getting in the swing of things, you can expect a couple of missteps, so be prepared to move communication to the correct forum if needed.
You may want to centralize conversations with your new hire on one platform, like Slack or another instant messaging app, to prevent them from becoming too confusing. For the initial onboarding conversation, a video meeting over Zoom may be easier and take less time than trying to do it all over chat-based messaging.
Finally, check in at least once daily to see if your new hire has any questions, especially if they haven’t reached out first.
Designing the onboarding process
First-day essentials
It probably goes without saying, but you and your team should be on time for your new hire’s initial onboarding if there’s a set schedule. Take the time to write a personalized welcome message so right away they feel like they’re already part of the team.
One of the biggest markers for new hire success is whether or not they feel connected to your company’s message and what you do. If your new hire feels that connection, they’ll be more likely to stay with your team, and you won’t have to worry about filling their position again in a few months.
On the new hire’s first day, try to see if that connection is there and think about ways to organically build it. You may want to come up with a few talking points ahead of time about company culture, your business’s mission statement, or other potential points of connection.
Structured onboarding timeline
Providing a structured timeline gives your new employees a sense of how much of the onboarding process they’ve completed, how much more they have left, and what you want them to understand. Onboarding timelines are a great way to clarify expectations within the onboarding process, which will help your new employees understand the rhythm of their goals as they continue their journey with your business.
Checklists are a great way to keep your new hire organized, especially if you pair them with a timeline. If your remote employee does some of their onboarding independently, be clear with your checklist items and what they should do once they’ve reached certain milestones.
Role-specific training
When the training for your new hire is role-specific and not just generic, it shows that you value their contribution in that role. Role-specific training can also save time since your new hire isn’t wading through irrelevant information.
One of the best ways to execute role-specific training is through mentorship. Pair your new hire with one person on the team they’re working on so the new employee can shadow and the established team member can instruct. This way, the new employee can have all their questions answered and see the team’s real day-to-day (as well as the expectations).
Mentorship will also ensure an extra layer of role clarity beyond instructions, handbooks, or conversations with your new hire. Nothing shows an employee your business protocols better than hands-on experience.
Leveraging technology for onboarding
Digital tools and platforms
With the rise of remote work since the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a plethora of tools and platforms for remote employee management.
Video meeting tools may be one of the most important things you consider. Virtual meetings where your new hires can see the faces of their coworkers will help them feel connected to the company and help them develop rapport with their team. This connection will also make it easier for them to ask questions and give ideas when applicable, which could be the source of your next innovation!
Enhancing engagement through virtual activities
As we’ve said, one of the most important things to come out of the onboarding process is developing a connection between your new hire and your business. A great way to do this is to make the process fun and engaging with virtual activities.
You don’t have to make the whole process into a game of Wheel of Fortune—choose a few key areas that can be splashy and invite casual conversation between your new hire and the rest of your team. For instance, you can do a virtual scavenger hunt with your handbook and different software for work so your new employee can get to know the business tools better.
Overcoming common challenges (information gain opportunity)
Building connections in a remote setting
Remote work can feel isolating, but there are ways to facilitate connections among your team. For instance, a virtual water cooler for casual interactions at lunch or between projects can build connections between coworkers, just like in an in-person office. Fostering these casual interactions makes your team more engaged and willing to help each other when needed.
If you can plan a conference people can attend in-person, you should seriously consider it. Nothing beats in-person communication, and having even just one a year will strengthen your team’s connection. Make sure to have fun at these conferences—have a talent show so people can show off what they do outside of work, have a happy hour, or consider a team-building retreat. Whatever meshes well with your culture will be effective.
Don’t sweat if an in-person event isn’t possible—there are still plenty of ways to build connections between your new hires and established teams. You can have a very successful virtual conference featuring informative panels and space designated for casual chat, or you can do something smaller, like a trivia lunch or a movie night. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and solicit ideas from your team.
Addressing productivity concerns
It may be counterintuitive, but productivity goes up sharply among individuals who work from home or have a hybrid schedule. This increase is likely due to a quieter work environment, fewer breaks needed, and more convenience.
If you’re still worried about productivity, setting incremental project timelines instead of expecting the results at a certain date will keep people on track. For example, if you’re running a social media campaign, instead of expecting the week’s incoming posts on Friday, consider asking your social media content team member to have a plan for the incoming posts by Tuesday, a few post graphics or captions done by Wednesday or Thursday, etc.
This method of breaking deadlines down into smaller parts will also prevent people from working on the project in a rush and not paying as much attention to the results or the process of coming to those results.
Conversely, if it seems like team members are working longer hours than you’d like, check in with them and ask if they need extra support on a project. These check-ins will also make it clear to new hires that you value their time and work/life balance, which is great for employee retention.
Measuring onboarding success
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all KPI that tells you whether or not your onboarding process is successful. You’ll want to keep an eye on a few different metrics to measure the success of your onboarding process:
- Training completion rate: This KPI measures how quickly your new hire completes their training. It will tell you whether you’re giving your new hire adequate time to train or if there are bottlenecks in the training process that you need to work out.
- Time to productivity rate: Similar to the training completion rate, this metric measures how long it takes for a new employee to start doing their job with little to no supervision at ideal productive output. Keep in mind that this metric may vary between teams and roles.
- Employee satisfaction: While this isn’t an exact science, getting a feel for how satisfied your new hire is will tell you whether they plan to stay. You can get a numbered metric using rating surveys, but you’ll also want to give your new hire space to talk about what’s working and what isn’t—more on that in the next section.
- Retention rate: This is a big-picture metric measuring the percentage of employees who stay with your business. A solid onboarding process can boost the probability of retention by over 80%, so the two go hand in hand.
Feedback mechanisms
Giving consistent feedback will show your new hires what they’re doing well and what they may need to improve on. When giving feedback, try to lead with positivity so your employees don’t get discouraged.
Along with giving feedback, you’ll want to know how your new hire is adjusting so you can address any problems or obstacles they have. You’ll want to make a habit of checking in on your new hires throughout their training process. Additionally, sending out surveys or other mechanisms to collect employee feedback is a good idea, as people tend to be more honest when they can be anonymous. For best results, send surveys to the entire team to maintain anonymity.
Remember to implement the feedback you get from your new hires (or established team members). Since check-ins aren’t anonymous, you can follow up with the new employee if you need clarification on what they’ve said or if your plan to improve their pain points is sufficient. This may improve employee satisfaction across your teams.
Sustaining engagement post-onboarding
Continuous learning and development
As your new hire acclimates to your business, it’s a great idea to encourage continuous learning with your whole team. Not only will this keep your business on the cutting edge, but it will also keep your employees engaged in what they do long-term.
It’s good to have this practice in place before your new hire begins so they can see that your business values development. If you don’t have a structure in place for it already, let this dive into the onboarding process be a good excuse to do some research and put that in place.
Part of continuous learning is learning as a manager or supervisor. For instance, promoting inclusivity in the workplace and considering your team’s needs will make you a more trusted manager and encourage your team to be more productive. Almost a third of employees report that a more inclusive workplace would motivate their performance, so it’s important to remember.
Building a remote-first culture
Having a remote-first culture can alleviate the costs of maintaining an office building and keep your office quieter. It may be beneficial to have your team on a hybrid or remote-leaning work schedule, and onboarding new fully remote employees can go a long way in seeing what you need to do to build this culture.
Conclusion
Onboarding is the first real, hands-on experience your new hire has with your company, so it’s important to make it smooth. Following our tips and breaking up the process into pre- and post-onboarding tasks can help you ensure the successful integration of your new hire.
