With the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, more people are working remotely than ever before. Companies of all sizes are being tasked with the challenges of having an ever-increasing number of employees work in a virtual and remote environment. During this crisis, companies like Zoom upped their game to show the world that advances in technology can reshape the way business is done.
And long after COVID-19 no longer poses an existential threat to the world, these changes will continue to transform the corporate landscape. That’s because as more enterprises are forced by the pandemic to do more work remotely, they discover all the extraordinary advantages of doing work this way.
These advantages include:
Saving money
More flexibility for team members
Reduced carbon footprint
However, remote work is not without its challenges. Two of the difficulties that raise their ugly head whenever any company tries to move to remote work is that it makes collaboration more complicated and increases technological glitches.
The Importance Of Onboarding
A significant challenge is onboarding remote employees. Although it’s harder to do from afar, it can be and should be done, and in the right way to ensure a smooth and impactful process for your new team members.
Onboarding plays a critical role in your new hire’s success and happiness. It also helps your new recruit get acclimated to a brand-new environment. For an employer, it’s a chance to introduce the new employee to the values, policies, and processes the company holds dear.
Onboarding remote employees is particularly critical since they don’t have the opportunity to naturally assimilate into your organization’s culture.
According to a Wynhurst Group study, employees are 58% more likely to stay with a company if they go through a formal onboarding process. Having a quality onboarding process increases employee retention and saves your business money in the long-term.
Here are some tips to make things easier:
1. Create Policies That Make Remote Onboarding Safer
Even when using company-owned equipment, your employee isn’t going to be immune from cyber threats. That’s why you need to come up with robust procedures that’ll help minimize the danger of cyber threats.
If you don’t do anything to safeguard your business’ data, it could be susceptible to unauthorized access. A breach in cybersecurity can lead to problems through tactics such as:
Installing spyware that allows a thief to track internet activity
Phishing emails that deceive recipients into disclosing their personal information
Spam emails that trick recipients into handing over access to their computer
Hijacking the company website and rerouting users to a fraudulent look-alike site where they steal your information
Here are some things you can do to make remote onboarding safer:
Make sure all company-used computers have anti-virus and anti-spyware software
Require individual user accounts for every employee
Limit employee access to data and information
Mandate that strict security procedures be adhered to with strong passwords to access the network
Limit access to data for employees who don’t require it to for their particular job
Issues with BYOD
BYOD, or “Bring Your Own Device,” is terrific for attracting younger employees. They are already technologically savvy and have a strong preference for using their own equipment. You can also provide your employees with a “technology stipend” to reduce the financial stress of acquiring new technology.
For example, you could give your employees $1,500 every three years to buy a device they can use for personal and work purposes. This money covers the cost of the device, business productivity applications, and anti-virus software.
You need to have a written and signed BYOD policy, so you’re covered if something goes wrong. The following are a few things to consider when creating one:
IT SUPPORT: Decide what IT support will be available to the employee and how it will be delivered. This could mean that the employee must take the device to an employee supplied third-party support provider if the employee is getting a technological stipend.
REMOVAL OF SENSITIVE INFORMATION: Because you’ll want to permanently erase company-specific data from devices once its use is no longer required (such as when an employee leaves the organization), you’ll need to have a policy for this.
LIST OF APPROVED DEVICES: A device might not meet your company’s security requirements, so it’s essential that your IT department come up with a list of approved ones.
VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK (VPN): To protect your sensitive information, ensure employees use a virtual private network (VPN). You can establish a company VPN for use on the employee’s broadband network.
Consult with a lawyer to make sure your BYOD policy is legally acceptable.
2. Consider Meeting at The Office
If your new employee is local, and no laws are violated (such as COVID restrictions or mandates), consider meeting them at the office for a more personal introduction.
Just make sure you practice social distancing. This is an excellent opportunity to give them their new equipment and ensure that it works properly.
3. Make Sure Your New Hire Understands Their Role
One of the most common errors companies make with onboarding is not making their expectations clear enough. Because you’re doing your onboarding virtually and not face-to-face, it becomes so much more important to establish crystal clear expectations.
That’s why you need to make sure that your new hire understands their job role inside and out. This can help you retain employees since confusion or uncertainty can often lead to turnover later down the line.
4. Try “Preboarding”
You can also significantly alleviate first-day jitters by “preboarding” or sending an employee information they’ll find useful before starting work.
Here’s what you can send:
A welcome letter or email
A detailed schedule for the employee’s first week
Links for virtual meetings
Passwords and credentials for initial login
Fun cultural items such as a company T-shirt or mug
5. Plan Out Your Employee’s Schedule
When an employee is working remotely, it’s easy to get distracted and disorganized. That’s why creating a plan and setting up a schedule can be helpful.
It can also be a great stress reliever—especially when the new recruit starts to feel overwhelmed.
Create an exact blueprint for the new recruit’s first 30, 60, and 90 days, so there’s no confusion with the new job responsibilities.
6. Make Sure You Cover All The Important Stuff
An exceptional onboarding experience will provide information that not only captures an employee’s attention but will also be illuminating.
You’ll want to offer an insightful perspective on the company’s history, objectives, and values, while also helping the new hire get acclimated to their role within the business.
Although you want onboarding to be informative, make sure it’s not so jam-packed with details that your new recruit gets overwhelmed with information overload.
7. Introduce Your New Recruit To The Rest Of The Team
Don’t leave your new hires alone during the onboarding process—have them make connections with others. Ask members of your team to reach out to new hires and introduce themselves during the first week.
This can be done through a videoconferencing platform such as Zoom. This will help the new hire to feel welcomed, and they’ll start to make the connections that could lead to a feeling of fitting into the company’s culture.
You could even have your new hires write a short letter of introduction that you post on your team’s chatboard such as Teams or Slack. Or, assign them a project within the first two weeks that demands collaboration with other cross-functional team members as a team-building exercise.
8. Schedule Daily Video Calls
It’s challenging to build an emotional connection with a new team, especially when you’re not in the same physical space. This can cause a new hire to feel isolated. Try scheduling a daily video check-in with your new hire to ensure they feel connected and like they have someone to turn to with any questions or concerns.
9. Make Remote Onboarding Exciting
Listening to video lectures and online training modules all day long can quickly become tedious. It’s important to incorporate elements of fun, excitement, and culture into your remote onboarding process. Give the newest member of your team a resounding welcome with fun ice breakers that’ll provide a delightful counterpoint to your work meetings.
For example, you can play a virtual game of “Jeopardy” where every question is about your company. You can also quiz new employees on the subject matter at hand to encourage active listening and participation.
Another idea that can help keep things interesting is learning new skills through roleplay. One way you can do this is by having someone play the role of an angry customer while another pretends he’s the customer service agent. This method also works great for training news salespeople on how to have conversations with potential customers. This is experiential learning, which makes it easier to internalize new information while also being more engaging.
10. Cultivate A Sense Of Mission
It’s often difficult for remote employees to feel connected. That’s why it’s crucial to share company goals with new hires. This reinforces the fact that they’re part of a larger team, working towards an overarching mission.
This will also help your workforce to feel engaged. According to a Gallup poll, only 30% of the U.S. workforce feels a sense of engagement. Disengaged workers aren’t productive, bring down morale, and have higher rates of absenteeism.
New recruits need to know that what they’re doing is making a difference. This will help them feel engaged. Creating opportunities for small accomplishments during their first few days of employment also helps employees to feel energized about their work.
11. Refine Your Process
If you’re not used to running remote teams, there might be bumps in the road before everything runs smoothly. Ask each new hire what about the onboarding process worked and what didn’t, in their opinion. That way, you can refine your processes and procedures moving forward.
Key Takeaways
Remote onboarding is more complicated than onboarding an employee who occupies the same physical space as you, but it can be done well with a thoughtful approach.
In this case, you have to be sensitive to the emotional isolation that a new employee feels, and counteract it by helping them feel like part of the team.
You can also help your new recruit assimilate into the company’s culture by giving them a schedule for the first several weeks, establishing clear expectations, and assigning them a project that requires collaboration.
The flow of talent into and out of your organization has a direct impact on your ability to do great business and thrive. That means every organization should have a clear vision and thoughtful approach to new employee onboarding.
Unfortunately, for many businesses, onboarding has evolved into a major pinch point. It’s become increasingly complicated, and it’s rarely satisfying for either the new employee or the organization who’s betting on their productivity.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
What new employees actually need to get started
Why the challenge of new employee onboarding/enablement has grown
How innovative employee management platforms address those challenges in effective and productivity-boosting ways
Breaking Down New Employee Support Needs
Let’s start by considering your brand-new employee. It’s their first day. They’ve got the talent and ability to be a difference-maker for you, and their enthusiasm will never be higher.
So, what do they need from you right away to feel authentically plugged in and ready to hit the ground running?
Let’s take a minute to break it down, piece by piece:
Getting Paid
Payroll enrollment is one of the most basic and important aspects of employee onboarding. You need your new employees to see a clear, legitimate path to payment from day one.
When you get payroll enrollment right, it creates a highly satisfying experience that motivates your new hires to dig in, roll up their sleeves, and immerse themselves in the work.
If your new employee’s first check isn’t prepared on time or if the information on it is wrong, that creates a negative early impression for your talent, and correcting the issue will only cost them more time and effort.
Signing Up for Benefits
As with payroll, smooth employee-benefits enrollment is crucial to getting your new talent bought in and ready to do great work.
Benefits election actually contains several specific but unique challenges:
Providing a platform and experience that makes signing up for benefits clear and easy
Offering educational resources that help new talent make the best, most cost-effective choices
Getting that documentation from your employee to your insurance providers
There is an incredibly wide spectrum of knowledge and comfort levels with health insurance across the workforce, and even for great talent, making benefit elections can be intimidating. When you’re able to make the process feel straightforward and empowering, it goes a long way in building buy-in and setting new hires up for success.
Work Enablement
Once your employees are enrolled in payroll and signed up for benefits, they’re probably feeling pretty legitimate and excited about the journey they’re starting. Capitalizing on that moment of enthusiasm is crucial, but it’s not possible unless you have a strong hold on the actual work enablement piece.
What do employees need in order to do great work? For some, that depends specifically on their role within your organization, but there are a few general areas that you need to address for every new hire.
Hardware
Every single employee within your organization needs technological hardware in order to do their job well, whether it’s patrol trackers and communication devices for security guards, tablets for field service workers, company phones for sales professionals, or just the standard desktop and laptop computers many people need to get work done.
Of course, you can’t just pass out expensive tech tools without a tracking and accountability system in place to ensure your hardware is kept in good condition and you know where all your devices are located. That means you’ve got the double-tough responsibility of getting your new hire everything they need as quickly as possible while also needing to focus on documentation.
Software/Accounts/Credentials
Passing out hardware is just the beginning of meeting your new employees’ technological and work enablement needs. In order to be a fully functional member of the team, they need all kinds of accounts created.
Depending on the situation, that might require purchasing software licenses, creating new login credentials, and so on, but to give you a sense of how much really goes into technical work enablement now, each employee likely needs:
An email account
A login for company ERP/productivity platform
Standard office software licenses (word processing, spreadsheet creation, etc.)
Document sharing/collaboration portal credentials
Access to any relevant SaaS or cloud-based apps
FAQ Support
Alright, so your new employee is fully enrolled in payroll and benefits, they have been issued their company hardware, and they have all the accounts and credentials they need to get started. What’s left? All the little stuff, of course!
No matter how smart or experienced your new hire, there are a variety of questions that are going to pop up in any new job scenario. The faster and more directly and effectively you can answer those questions, the faster your new hire will stop feeling like the new hire and start feeling like a fully-integrated team member.
That means you need some kind of reference resource built into your onboarding system that incoming talent can use as a floatation device during times of confusion or panic in their opening weeks.
With that piece in place, you’ve officially onboarded a new hire in a way that supports great work and great organizational buy-in.
Why Is It So Hard to Get Employee Onboarding Right?
When you dissect it like we have, new employee onboarding is a massive responsibility, and the expanded use of technology hardware and software over the last 25 years has only made it more complicated.
Thanks to all those tech support needs, onboarding has grown into a shared responsibility of HR & IT. Unfortunately, though, the interdepartmental back-and-forth often leads to communication breakdowns, duplication of effort, and poor data hygiene.
Finally, a better way is emerging.
How Employee Management Platforms Address These Challenges
Employee management platforms are software solutions that integrate as many of the tasks related to employee onboarding and long-term employee management as possible into a single system.
Employee management platforms eliminate repetitive tasks, significantly streamlining the paperwork and communication associated with onboarding tasks and allowing for full new employee enablement in a single day.
Using an employee management platform, you can leverage a single system your employees can use to:
Enroll in payroll and benefits
Access, download, or log into the apps and software they need
Connect and communicate with their colleagues
Get answers to basic questions about employee protocol and support resources
At the same time, your managers, HR, IT, and payroll professionals can use the system to:
Assign and track hardware
Monitor employee time usage
Create (or disallow) credentials, accounts, and permissions as needed
Build and automate custom workflows between tools
Make updates to the system using a single source of truth
How Employee Management Platforms are Providing New Gains
By bringing all that management, administration, and work enablement functionality together in one place, employee management platforms create incredible time savings. That means more time for productivity!
When there’s no repeat data entry and everything can be handled through a single platform, your HR professionals will have more time to provide a holistic, employee-centered onboarding experience that sets new hires up for success and leaves them feeling ready to take on the world for your company.
When you provide a platform that simplifies hardware assignment, it frees your IT team from the mindless tasks of device management and creates new opportunities for them to pursue long-term quality-of-life initiatives for your employees.
And, of course, when you provide a new employee onboarding experience that feels cutting edge, easy-breezy, and empowering, your incoming talent will have a greater sense of security, a greater sense of motivation, and a greater sense of purpose.
Takeaways
Employee onboarding procedures can feel like an endless list of equally crucial tasks. Employee management platforms are creating new opportunities to untie that knot and rethink onboarding.
Remember:
New employees need to feel legitimate and see a clear path to compensation from day one
New employees need their work tools as fast as possible to accelerate their integration into work and company culture
Onboarding can feel over-complicated because the responsibilities are spread out across several different departments
By all integrating the processes and tasks into a single system, businesses can maximize new employee onboarding and get the most out of their talent from day one
How to Learn More
Rippling is revolutionizing the onboarding process by helping HR professionals support their new hires better than ever.
By integrating all aspects of the onboarding process into a single digital platform, Rippling accelerates the new employee orientation experience, connecting hires with the tools, coverage, and credentials they need with a minimal number of clicks.
To learn more about how Rippling can smooth the employee onboarding process at your business and create a new way of managing HR and IT responsibilities, contact them today.
A new employee’s first days and weeks of work are a crucial time. Their early impressions of the organizational structure, leadership, climate, and culture of their new environment will directly affect the way in which they approach work in the coming months and years.
On the other hand, when incoming talent is thrown into the fire or not provided the education they need to hit the ground running, it significantly lowers productivity, both for the confused, under-served new-hire and their teammates, who must constantly take time out of their own work hours to triage knowledge and skill gaps.
Preventing those hang-ups is one of HR’s main responsibilities. With a proactive, straightforward, integrated approach to onboarding, you can ensure that creating a great experience for your new hires doesn’t come at the expense of your current team’s productivity.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
The true scope and definition of onboarding
How HR, IT, and each department or team within an organization can support great onboarding
Five things all organizations need to do to get onboarding right
What is Onboarding, Really?
In an HR context, onboarding is the process through which new hires gain the knowledge, skills, tools, strategies, and motivation they need to become great team members and productive employees.
That’s actually good news for HR professionals, as it helps focus on what most of us are really passionate about: setting people up for success.
Let’s break down that onboarding definition and look at each individual element with an eye toward what a strong procedure can truly accomplish.
Knowledge Transfer Requirements for New Employees
Your hires need all sorts of knowledge in order to thrive in their new roles. They already have most of the functional understanding they need – that’s why you hired them – but you need to teach them your specific expectations for success.
Incoming talent likely has a track record of success on some level, but that doesn’t mean every one of them knows how to complete day-to-day tasks in the specific way your team prefers. Ensuring your new-hires hit the ground running in a positive, productive manner means identifying and mitigating skill gaps as quickly as possible.
The skills you need to reinforce with your new hires will vary depending on the role and each professional’s existing skillset, but it’s best to have plans in place to address issues like:
Skill assessments for incoming talent to gauge education needs
Tutorials and lessons on relevant work software/ERPs/etc.
Leadership coaching for new or emerging managers
Specific device training for technicians
Guidance on professional communication
Tool Acquisition for New Employees
Connecting your new employees with the physical tools they need to do great work is just as important as equipping them with the right knowledge and mindset.
Knowing what each new-hire needs requires a deep understanding of your organizational chart and proactive communication across a number of departments.
For each team member you welcome into the fold, you need to determine and fulfill their needs as quickly as possible, including:
Access credentials and digital accounts for relevant software/systems (email, salesforce, or github etc.)
Work computers (desktop, laptop, etc.)
Company mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, etc.)
Device accessories (keyboards, chargers, etc.)
Traditional office supplies (Pens, folders, etc.)
Strategy Development for New Employees
At some point in their careers, your new employees are going to run into problems. Maybe they’ll have a life-changing event that necessitates an insurance change. Maybe they’ll have an issue with a co-worker that requires mediation, the list goes on and on.
You can greatly reduce anxiety for your team members and set them up for instant success by identifying as many of those common problems and frequently asked questions and proactively addressing them with new hires.
HR can support talent immediately and improve their overall experience by helping them develop strategies for:
Addressing problems with colleagues or supervisors
Reporting facilities or maintenance-related issues
Contacting security
Connecting with IT support
Discussing performance, goals, and progress
Communicating across departments
Building Motivation for New Employees
Knowledge transfer, skill building, tool acquisition, and strategy development are the four most important onboarding considerations when it comes to delivering a new employee who is ready to do a great job and become a fully integrated member of your team and culture.
Frameworks and structures for bonuses, raises, equity options, etc.
Introduction to the value of day-to-day perks and employee culture initiatives
Opportunities to interact with and receive mentorship from standout talent
Education on company success stories, exciting innovations, and other news
Onboarding as a Whole-Company Responsibility
When you look at the scope of what’s been laid out, it’s apparent that no HR professional or department can build a great onboarding process in isolation. Integrating and empowering new team members as quickly as possible must be an organization-wide value and priority in order to harness onboarding for talent maximization.
During any onboarding process, IT should be one of your closest allies. They provide the functional tools and support that complement the great job your department does preparing new hires to become great employees.
For now, however, let’s consider the traditional departmental divides to think about how responsibilities are generally spread out across HR, IT, and each new hire’s department or team.
HR Onboarding Checklist
Completion of onboarding documents and forms
Data entry in HCM and appropriate employee databases
Policy review/handbook sign-off
Payroll enrollment
Benefit enrollment
Physical orientation to the office or workspace
Introductions to new supervisor and team
IT Onboarding Checklist
Hardware assignment
Account/credential creation
Digital workspace creation
Offering availability for increased support during onboarding time
Team-Based Onboarding Checklist
Introduction to work/communication norms
Connecting new hires with resources that close their skill and knowledge gaps
Proactively communicating with HR about emerging need during onboarding period
How Interdepartmental Collaboration Improves Onboarding
The better the integration between their work efforts, the faster and easier it is to provide comprehensive onboarding and create a new talent orientation that sets everybody up for success.
At the same time, coming to the table to discuss and address onboarding needs together fosters collaborative problem-solving between different teams and departments who might otherwise not interact with each other. That whole-company understanding of supporting and managing talent helps create a strong organization from top to bottom.
Top 5 Employee Onboarding Musts
You Must Work Together with Your Colleagues
As we just detailed above, no business can onboard talent effectively if any individual or single department is responsible for the whole process.
If your HR department is feeling crushed under the weight of onboarding responsibilities, it’s crucial to reach out to your colleagues and advocate for the support you need to improve engagement and results across the organization. Tell your leaders what you really need from them to do an excellent job.
If you’re not getting the support you need from IT or some other department, find a way to address the issue, either by connecting with tools that allow your HR team to take on traditional IT tasks or by building integration and closer communication between your teams.
2. You Must Ensure Each Member of Your Team is Fully Accountable
When your onboarding process is complete, every single new hire should know which responsibilities, requirements, policies, and procedures are relevant to them. Without that backbone of accountability, it’s impossible to manage talent proactively or demonstrate how your department is creating a safe, productive workplace.
Of course, it’s not just important for employees to know the rules and policies; it’s crucial that there is a secure, high-integrity documentation trail backing up that work. That way, if issues do arise, there are vetted and agreed upon mechanisms in place for dealing with the issues.
If your onboarding procedure doesn’t empower your HR department and leadership team to manage, discipline, and hold new-hires accountable for their actions and performance, it’s time for a redesign with accountability in mind.
3. You Must Help Your Hires Make the Best Benefits Elections
Employee benefits overspend is a profitability killer, and as an HR department, preventing it should be one of your top priorities.
New hires need support in order to understand what your company’s benefits offerings really mean and which ones are the ideal fit for their situation. That means you need to provide them with whatever education and clarification they require to get the coverage they need without selecting something that will create excess costs for themselves or the company.
Part of that puzzle is connecting them with the right materials they need (your benefits broker should be a major help in this effort), but it’s equally important that your enrollment and benefits selection interface is clear, easy-to-use, and designed to answer user questions and prevent confusion.
4. You Must Offer Each Team Member a Workspace That’s Uniquely Theirs
Nobody wants to feel like they inherited the last employee’s setup – it’s a buy-in and motivation killer. Your onboarding process should be standardized in a way that makes things easy for your HR, IT, and other onboarding support professionals but also personalized in a way that truly welcomes each employee to the team.
By the time their onboarding window is complete, each new hire must feel like their functional and professional needs have been met in a way that sets them up to do great work from the outset. That requires a toolkit for provisioning and account creation that creates a bespoke digital workspace for each individual and a framework for communication between departments to make sure needs are recognized and addressed from every angle.
When new employee onboarding feels tailored to a hire’s needs without stretching or inconveniencing any members of your team, you know you’ve built something inspirational and effective for everyone.
5. You Must Make Onboarding Powerful but Easy
This is a theme we’ve come back to time and time again: onboarding should be easy. It must be straightforward in a way that protects the productivity of your core team, and it must feel approachable and engaging in a way that builds buy-in with your new talent.
With that said, that ease of experience can’t come from cutting corners or procrastinating. To work well, your onboarding process must be comprehensive, well-organized, and backed by professionals across your organization. Otherwise, you’re just creating more backlogged work and compromising your opportunity for workforce maximization.
Creating something that balances that flexibility and robust support can seem like a major challenge, but there’s a variety of emerging employee onboarding software providers stepping up to help companies understand how they can streamline and integrate this work.
Key Takeaways
We’ve taken a broad look at onboarding to explore its goals, responsibilities, and a few strategies and guiding lights you can use to improve your approach. While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the weight of the responsibility of onboarding, it’s important to understand that, once you have effective onboarding processes running, it’s much easier to manage current talent and anticipate future needs.
Remember:
Getting onboarding right strengthens a company from top to bottom
Onboarding can’t just be HR’s responsibility – it’s a team-wide responsibility of which HR should be the hub
A successful onboarding process ensures each new employee is ready to be a fully productive member of the team in terms of capability, accountability, and cultural fit
It’s important to engage and support new hires by making onboarding personalized, easy, and well-supported
How to Learn More
Rippling is revolutionizing the onboarding process by helping HR professionals support their new hires better than ever.
By integrating all aspects of the onboarding process into a single digital platform, Rippling accelerates the new employee orientation experience, connecting hires with the tools, coverage, and credentials they need with a minimal number of clicks.
To learn more about how Rippling can smooth the employee onboarding process at your business and create a new way of managing HR and IT responsibilities, contact them today.
