The majority of people are working from home. This has meant that the hiring process has had to go online. When you decide on who to hire, the new employees must be onboarded onto your software and processes. However, this too had to go purely online. This means, your onboarding process has become more crucial to the smoothness of your projects and teams, than ever before. Rather than failing to adapt quickly, you should seek to implement a new type of onboarding process so that remote workers can successfully pass the tests and tutorials you need them to, in order for them to begin using their talent.
Make an introduction
Instead of thrusting the newly hired employee into the onboarding process, give them a short introduction to the software they are onboarding to. This could be a short video that is 1-2 minutes long explaining the following things.
- What is the software used for? Show your core processes and key dependencies.
- What is the structure of the software, i.e. is it cloud-based, how is email used within the software, managing tasks and projects, etc?
- What kind of templates are used for automation purposes?
- How will or should they approach their daily tasks and work within the software?
The onboarding process
Creating an onboarding process for specifically your business, software and role of the employee is tough. It takes a lot of planning to make a smooth tutorial with clear instructions, great pace, incremental tests and fun games that help employees to learn the small details. Working with a professional onboarding service such as https://www.learningbank.io/onboarding, will allow you to design an effective step-by-step process that is approaching onboarding specifically, for remote workers. Their digital learning platform can host a whole range of information, tests such as multiple choice answers, essential reading recommendations, and practice runs, etc. Using this type of program you can also have a virtual buddy that can run the remote worker through the process, as both people will be in the onboarding program and software at the same time.
Meet the team
Part of any onboarding process includes introducing the new employee to their team. It will not only be a chance for them to get to know their colleagues but also, to know what kind of role they play within the team. So, set up a meeting day whereby all the employees of the team that the hiree is going to join, are online and able to set aside 60-90 minutes of their day to meet their new team member.
Part of the process should include a small task that the hiree and the teamwork on. This is like a trial run of a normal day at the office and just helps the employee to know who they should be communicating with if they are stuck, how tasks are moved from one employee to the next and how emails should be written to clients, etc.
Onboarding is an incredibly important step when it comes to hiring new employees that can only work remotely. The distance is going to make it more difficult but with a great process, it shouldn’t be too detrimental.