The onboarding process can make or break a new hire’s path.
Optimized onboarding is vital for remote employees, as they don’t have many opportunities to integrate into company culture and processes organically.
As the world is turning into a remote-first workforce, creating usable and well-planned remote onboarding processes becomes essential when integrating leading tech talents into your company.
Remote onboarding - what new hires can expect
In essence, the age of remote work makes new hires expect back-to-back virtual onboarding sessions to learn about their new company, team processes, and most importantly, to meet new colleagues.
Knowing that tech talents are usually punctual and concise brings us to the natural conclusion that onboarding meetings should not be tiring, long, and boring.
However, you as an HR professional have a task to present your company as detailed as possible, which almost instantly puts you on a collision course. It’s rightful to ask yourself, how to optimize this process in a remote environment?
In addition, for some companies becoming remote-first has been a demanding transition. And as we all feel, there aren’t a lot of resources available out there telling you what to do.
We believe that sharing some of our insights will be helpful for tech companies that are now becoming remote-first workforce.
Different perspectives
Firstly, let’s recap what the onboarding process is.
Employee onboarding is a series of activities allowing new hires to know their team and learn about company attitudes, methods, tools, and rituals. On the other hand, remote onboarding is the same process, but when the new hire is about to work remotely rather than in the office.
However, from an employee perspective, an onboarding program is an opportunity to get used to a new environment.
The onboarding process can be formal and informal. Formal onboarding includes workshops, training, and video calls, while informal includes shadowing other people in the organization, understanding company conventions, and subtle coaching.
Overall, onboarding is a series of events happening during a particular course of time, and it's tailored for specific roles inside the organization.
Remote onboarding optimization
Optimizing remote onboarding procedures demands understanding certain basics. First of all, remote onboarding can be split into four phases:
- Pre-onboarding
- Orientation
- First assignments
- Ongoing support
Ensure that the new hire doesn’t get lost under the large quantity of information. Primarily, HR professionals need to help new hires identify the best channels to raise questions, especially if they work in another time zone. The solution is to provide them with a structured process list.
We can’t provide you with the golden rules or quick wins, but as the first step towards successful remote onboarding, try to organize your process to suit tech hires’ expectations.
Avoid overloading new hires
We have to agree that the recently hired software developers have a lot to learn, and as fast as possible. If we throw everything we want to teach them at once, it will soon become a very intimidating experience. Also, there is a greater chance that new hires will tend to cut as many corners to jump from one information to another. Break the process and organize it around the phases mentioned above.
Buddy program
We always come to this, and it might sound fashionable in the dev’s world, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t practical. Some aspects of a company culture that writing can’t convey with an assigned buddy can be possible.
Setup regular 1:1’s
Recently hired software developers need to catch up and blend in with the teams fast. We suggest pre-schedule 15-minute meetings with key team members having a chance to share what they do with someone completely new.
Make sure to get feedback
The remote onboarding process is always a work in progress, and getting meaningful feedback is essential. Ask new hires what worked and what didn’t once they have completed their onboarding.
Conclusion
You can teach recently hired software developers to complete tasks and manage their time, but the biggest challenge will be integrating them into your company culture. This is when a quality onboarding program comes in handy as the first step towards culture-fit employees.
