Making your new employee feel welcomed, getting that person productive, and managing your company’s culture are all possible when you put together the right virtual onboarding checklist.
An effective Virtual On boarding process will help your new hires feel more valued, better understand their role, and increase their productivity and performance, resulting in increased engagement. Remote employees won’t have run-ins with the complainers or gossips at the water cooler. And you can facilitate virtual lunches and coffee breaks with the people who have upbeat outlooks.
When it comes to Virtual On boarding, the best practices facilitate bonding between co-workers as effectively as in-person interactions. Virtual onboarding ideas that will strengthen your team include assigning multiple “onboarding buddies” to your new hire and planning virtual lunches for them. The virtual lunch gives employees an opportunity to get to know the new hire and offer to help orient them. Often, the casual feel of a lunch lends itself better to positive interaction among employees.
COVID has given you a sampling of the difficulties around virtual onboarding and the new hire experience.
Due to COVID organizations understand the importance of virtual onboarding as When COVID hit, you may have hastily reworked your current onboarding process into a virtual plan. It probably included ad hoc Zoom meetings and email blasts with links to scattered documents.
The dust has settled, so to speak, but the pandemic rages on. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of employees who have been working from their homes prefer to continue doing so after the pandemic ends. And yours may be one of the many companies that are realizing the benefits of a more productive workforce and less rent for office space.
If your company is embracing remote work for at least some of your employees, it’s time to build a virtual-first-on-boarding experience.
Working from home means missing out on the benefits of casual, in-person interactions. New hires have an even more difficult time bonding with their team members. Your virtual onboarding experience needs to help your new hire feel like part of the team.
Virtual onboarding during COVID may have left you disappointed with your new hires’ rate of productivity. It’s just tougher to get the new person up to speed when no one is near to see how things are going. You need to plan for more support for your virtual onboarding process.
One of the first things you should do is create a virtual onboarding email template that includes a quick rundown of important information and links to important documents. Onboarding software can help you organize all of your new employee forms. You can even include in your welcome email a link to training modules in the onboarding software.
As mentioned, the idea behind these virtual employee onboarding examples is to encourage interaction. Assigning multiple onboarding buddies to your new hire connects her with helpful, relevant resources that will help her become productive more quickly. Remember also to task your buddies with checking in on the new hire and setting up virtual coffee breaks or lunches.
Giving your new hire several people to lean on for support spreads the weight. Introducing your new hire to people from different, but related, areas of the company will help her understand the big picture. And finally, assigning multiple onboarding buddies will increase the odds that one of them will be a good personality fit with the new employee.
