Remote onboarding: How to effectively onboard new employees

Picture this: eager remote, new employees receive a flurry of text-heavy and dense onboarding materials on their first day, with next or no interaction with a human.
It's not exactly a welcoming reception, but not an unusual one in today's remote onboarding setting.

The stakes are high. The impact of a subpar onboarding experience could reverberate past the initial weeks. Research shows that those who don't have a positive first-time employee experience are twice as likely to seek an employment opportunity.

So how do you create an onboarding program for remote employees that welcomes, engages, and retains new employees? The answer is in this comprehensive guide to onboarding remote workers, which includes an action plan of five steps and virtual onboarding best practices to help new teammates hit the ground running.

What exactly is remote onboarding?

Remote onboarding is the process of the introduction of a new employee to the culture of your business as well as the team and tools required to perform their work. The complete onboarding plan assists new employees in understanding their role, the company and who they'll work with.

The ideal way to start is by taking a new worker around the office, inviting to lunch with them, and lots of handshakes. With remote onboarding, however it takes place virtually through videos, videoconferencing, interactive exercises, and text tools.

Virtual Training Handbook

Discover how businesses keep employees up-to-date – and get faster onboarding time by using videos

How do you onboard remote employees?

Check out our action plan in five steps for integrating new remote workers:

1. Virtual onboarding pre-work

83% of companies that are highly performing kickstart their onboarding process before an employee's first day. They are aware of the significance for a successful beginning. Pre-work ensures everything goes in the right direction. So get to work with these steps:

• Get all the hardware as well as manuals and handbooks sent to the employee who is hired prior to their start date. Alternately, you can transfer a hardware shopping budget to them and give them an estimated date by which the new employee should have their desk set.
• Ask the IT team to assist with the setting-up of the brand new device. Installation of VPNs via remote and security software are all tasks for this step.
• Give away some corporate items. Logo-branded mugs, stickers, T-shirts, and socks, in addition to other products, help the new employees feel like they are part of your organization.
• Introduce company communication tools and set up the newcomer's accounts.
• Find out the new employee's details, including their prior job, interests as well as other details. Send it to the group so they can welcome the new person.

Speed up the paperwork process through enabling the new employee to fill and sign documents digitally using secure eSignature tools like DocuSign.

2. Remote orientations for employees who are new

If the new member had not met them in their interview for employment then it's best to do an intro video call. After that, they can have a a one-on-one meeting with the principal members.

Be sure to keep the first call brief and unrelated to work while addressing clear expectations for the role as well as establishing the procedure for working and setting the short and long-term objectives on the side.

3. Set up meetings with the persons they'll collaborate with closely.

Introduce the new employee to workplace Slack. It is possible to do it yourself, or an experienced person can take on the responsibility.

Using information about the new face that you sent to the rest of your group in step one, everyone can personalize their welcoming message.

Next, set up meetings for the new hire with their team members for them to get acquainted. We at the company, schedule and mark the newcomer's first-week introduction calls in their Google Calendar to minimize confusion.

4. Host getting-to-know-the-business onboarding and training sessions

As the process of integrating remote workers requires getting them acquainted with your company and what it has to offer it, it is essential to plan out the classes they'll need to take.

For remote onboarding process, we provide the following training classes for everyone who joins Vimeans within their first month. You are welcome to borrow these session ideas for onboarding new employees:

New hire orientation and Trust and Safety Chat that will provide an overview of the mission, vision, and worth, and explains who is who at the company

New hire orientation, as well as U.S. benefits, which provides benefits and enrollment of U.S. employees

The session explains and trains about the products we offer

A Strategy session that will provide a thorough look at 's consumer expectations, strategy, goals, and positioning

Security Session that introduces the latest Vimeans security policies.

5. Do a little task to get them into a work zone

When all of the meetings for onboarding and training sessions are out of the way, ask your new hire's manager to assign them a small job. This is an opportunity to help them get a sense of the way they'll perform and the people they'll have collaborate with in order in order to accomplish their tasks.

It is important to ensure that newcomers receive adequate information and understanding of the task, and also examples of what needs to be done. Include point(s) of contact, too.

How can you make onboarding video tutorials?

Video tutorials show the way things take place instead of telling the process, which makes videos a fantastic tool to onboarding new employees. You could, for instance, include a video on employee onboarding that greets them and takes them through their initial 30 days. In the same way, a video tutorial on training will help you clarify how the product functions.

There are two varieties of onboarding videos help - walksthroughs and standard. If you prefer the walkthrough, you can use video templates to quickly make them.

Here's an example welcome template for a video:

https://player..com/api/player.js

And here's an example in an actual situation:

Our customers are awestruck by Record One of their customers posting:

"Internally, we're a distributed team across 10+ hours of time zone, and are limited in the time that we're all online together. Utilizing this software for asynchronous collaboration lets us reclaim the time we're all online to focus on richer topics!"   HIlah Stahl, founder of Spoak Decor

Record can be a straightforward, effective way to pass the latest information to your new employees while they are learning about the business's processes and processes.

The creation of a brand new employee orientation welcome video

This process shouldn't take you time. Follow these tips:

• Keep the video short - five to 10 minutes is optimal. To do so, create short videos on an issue like one that explains the company's background and another focusing on the values of the business as well as others.
• Get the executive and supervisory managers on the same page to greet the new member.
• Get creative to make the new employee feel member of the team. In the example of an employee's welcome video we discussed the employee's hobbies outside of the office.

10 common pitfalls in remote onboarding and how to avoid them

Before we wrap this up Let's look at 10 common mistakes to avoid when using remote onboarding, and ways to prevent them:

1. New hires are left to learn as they go

The first days of a new job are never easy. The anxiety and the "I'm new here" feeling are only aggravated if the newbie doesn't know how to proceed and must figure things out on their own.

What's the solution? A checklist of all your tasks for the day.

Solution: Make an onboarding checklist that lists the various steps the new employee should be able to be required to complete

For the brand new Vimeans such as Vimeans we provide a Google Docs checklist that lists Things to Do First. It helps provide direction to the new Vimeans and also push anxiety-inducing jitters off the screen.

2. Not having a roadmap for hiring new workers to be successful

Remote onboarding isn't something to be considered added as an afterthought. You can't just wing it. Doing so will only cause confusion and frustration to employees who don't know how to succeed in their new roles.

It is essential to have a plan in place to help them thrive.

Solution: Make an action plan for setting your new hire to be successful

Create a clear onboarding plan, like the popular 30--60-90 method, which is used to define distinct goals for your new hire's initial months. The plan will outline the duties the new employees must accomplish within the first 30to 60 and 90 days at the company. It will also provide them with a direction to succeed and efficiency.

This plan is like the new hire's personal GPS, showing them all of the appropriate turns and milestones to hit in their first few months.

3. Let new employees adjust to a new company culture alone

Imagine starting at a remote company and a totally new culture to acclimate to--without anyone to assist you. The challenges that come with navigating the new work environment can make it a daunting, isolating as well as a very an incredibly lonely and solitary experience.

Solution: Pair the new employee with a partner who can help them navigate your business the company's culture

Have people at the office who excel in greeting newcomers? Great. Designate them as your person to call for any new employee.

In , we assign every new employee a Hire Buddy to guide the newcomer in the work environment and culture as well as providing guidance and assistance through the initial month.Similarly, Buffer assigns two new hires to hire as a role-play buddy, who is from their team, answering any questions regarding the task or role and a culture buddy that is the company's new employee's cultural guide.

4. Not checking in with newly hired employees enough

Don't assume that all the new employees are performing well. The process of starting a new job could be stressful and overwhelming in some cases. And if you're not checking in enough, you're not giving these employees the help they require to get settled into their new position.

Solution: Make sure you check in frequently

By checking with the new member regularly - inquiring about issues and asking whether you are able to assist them by any means - you demonstrate the fact that they can reach out to you anytime.

5. Not requesting feedback on the experience of onboarding

Onboarding is not something that you can put into place once and never revisit again. As the workforce evolves, so much the onboarding process. If you're not asking for feedback, you won't be aware of what you must do to improve your process in order to implement the changes necessary for new hires to succeed.

Solution: Ask for feedback once new employees have completed the onboarding process.

Inquiring about their onboarding experience is essential to enhance your process according to the feedback you get. We ask feedback-focused questions in our 90-day feedback survey.

Some questions you can ask:

• What was it that they liked the most?
• What would have led to an easier transition?
• What aspects of the onboarding process helped to make them better aware of their role and their teammates the most effectively?

6. Not documenting the entire onboarding process

The process of onboarding is a long and complex one. It's almost impossible to recall every single stage without documenting the entire procedure. If you attempt at it, you'll likely forget important steps that could be the difference between a new hire's onboarding experience.

Solution to document the onboarding process from beginning to end

The act of writing it all down on paper will make it easier to recall each step. Additionally, it helps an additional hiring manager to take on employees in the event that you're leaving or moving to a new company. It also makes it easy to give onboarding tasks to specific people.

Here are some ways to record:

• A list of the key team members who the new employee must have in mind.
• A list of the equipment and software that the new employee will need.
• Who will set the logins of the new employee to access the workplace tools.
• Who's responsible for the arrangement of the hardware, what they'll be doing this, and when they'll do it.
• Guide or one-sheeter for hire companions that outline ways in which they may give assistance as well as tips on giving corrective feedback.

7. Depends on boring, ineffective materials

Although one-pagers, PDFs and slide decks provide the essential information that new hires require however, they're certainly not screaming fun. If you want to show your company's culture and employee experience in your onboarding experience Video could be the way to go.

Solution: Ramp up the excitement factor by playing video

From CEO's welcome messages to the entire details of your expenses system, videos can be used to tell a compelling story.

8. Making sure the liner of the process is non-customizable

The process of onboarding virtual can be structured in a linear way and can result in a hysterical atmosphere. The way to learn isn't universally applicable so it's challenging for newly hired employees to engage with an onboarding process that's not flexible.

Solution: Put employees in the driving seat.

Instead, HR and people teams could create an information repository where the new employees can design their own personal onboarding experience. So, they are able to navigate training with the freedom to revisit and engage with information according to their own preferences.

"This catalog of content allows employees to be trained when and where is best for their needs. Training is accessible anytime, any day of the week. This is important because there are people taking the training on their own schedules as they are aware that it's going to improve their own performance."    Phil Price, Head of The Performance Academy, Stellantis

9. The team building is not being covered during onboarding

Remote work is that employees do not get to experience those encounters in person which bring coworkers closer in an office.

The lunchtime banter as well as elevator interactions as well as hallway catch-ups in the lead up to meetings contribute are all crucial in integrating new employees in the company culture. If you fail to make this a priority during the onboarding process this process will not go smoothly and new employees are likely to feel excluded.

Solution: Integrate team-building activities

To recreate some of the vitality of this experience, leave some white space in the onboarding process that allows remote employees to connect. Create a team Slack channel on which the team members from remote locations can bounce ideas, ask questions and share humorous memes.

10. The lack of inclusion during the process of onboarding

Solution: Make sure you are intentional about making sure you are inclusive

Check that all the onboarding materials are available in accessible formats, as well as provide alternate ways for employees to gain access and read the information.

Community onboarding

The onboarding Master Class also dove into the notion of "community onboarding," discussing how to create an environment that is inclusive - even in a remote space. Have a look below:

Virtual Onboarding FAQs

What are the 4 steps of the process of onboarding?

The four phases that comprise onboarding comprise:

1. The Orientation (welcoming the new employee)
2. Role training (coaching the trainees on how to do their new job)
3. Transition (giving the transition team full accountability of their job)
4. Continuous development (creating strategies for their professional growth)

Does onboarding equate to instruction?

Training and onboarding are distinct courses, yet they often to be integrated. Onboarding is about introducing new employees to your company, culture as well as other employees whereas training involves activities to explain to new employees the best way to perform their duties.

What is the best way to train your employees remotely?

Utilize videos and other interactive tools to help employees learn online. Video walksthroughs of an exact process specifically, is an effective method of showing the process instead of simply listing steps. The storage of content on one site such as a video library can make it simpler for employees to access resources at any time.

What is the length of the onboarding process?

The typical onboarding process lasts for 90 days beginning with welcome phone calls and welcoming messages, concluding with a check-in of three months. The exact duration, however is different from company to business.

Wrapping up

If you're aware of the steps to take and checklists to make, put into action now and take advantage of the benefits of employee retention later. Why are you waiting around? Find a paper and start creating.

  The version was first launched on May 4 2021. It was updated on June 20, 2023 to ensure relevance.