Starting a new job can be both daunting and exciting - it’s a big moment, and the start of your journey within your new company. We all want to feel that we joined the right company, and as a business owner or manager, you want to make sure your new hire becomes a productive member of your team. Onboarding remote employees effectively is crucial for ensuring they feel welcomed, informed, and ready to contribute to the team.
Small businesses, start-ups and scale-ups often struggle to create a standardised onboarding process - whether they overcomplicate and over-engineer, or don’t attempt to streamline at all because “everything always changes”. The solution? Taking a modular approach.
Start by thinking about which elements of your onboarding are universally applicable at the organisational level, departmental level or are role-specific. By breaking down your onboarding into modular components, you can create flexible building blocks that can be tailored to the needs of different employees without starting from scratch every time.
Hopefully your team is already using a project management system to manage their day-to-day tasks. Most project management tools allow you to create templates or at the very least duplicate tasks - make use of this functionality. Start by creating templates of your building blocks. As your processes take shape and become more refined, you will be able to templatise entire role-specific onboarding processes from start to finish, while quickly adapting them for newly created roles using your existing blocks.
A super-low-tech alternative here would be to create simple check lists in Google / Word doc or spreadsheet. The key is that it’s clear which modules are applicable to all new hires, and which are only for specific new hires.
Once you have your processes down (and really only then!), you can begin to add automation to it. Take a hard look at your process and identify automation opportunities. Could the initial task set-up in your PM tool happen automatically after a specific trigger (e.g. contract signed)? Can information shared by the new hire be automatically uploaded and distributed to the right places? Be careful here to not over-automate, and to build in personalisation dynamically where feasible.
Begin building real human connections before your new hire even starts. Think about small ways of creating a sense of belonging. Start and end their first day with a face-to-face (virtual) conversation. Schedule calls and coffee chats with team members, and make sure to have regular check-ins between the new hire and their manager. Depending on your organisation, you can also assign an onboarding buddy to help guide your new hire through those critical first few weeks.
As with any process, taking a human-centred approach is key to creating processes that aren’t only efficient on paper, but that actually work for the people who use them. With this in mind, make sure to have your team review your onboarding process, or even have them co-create specific onboarding modules. Equally as important is to create feedback mechanisms to make sure you can iterate and continuously improve your onboarding process.
While talking to humans is great, having clear metrics defining what a successful onboarding would look like is even better. What data can you look at to see if your onboarding is working as it should? For example, you could track Time-to-productivity and New Hire Satisfaction, and analyse these alongside qualitative feedback you received from the team and the new hire themselves.
Focus: Preparing for new hire’s first day; Making new hire feel welcome and excited.
There are 2 key goals for your pre-boarding:
Typical tasks here include completing any compliance and legal steps, preparing for systems and tools access and getting any tech and equipment to the new hire. To keep your new hire excited, send out a welcome pack (which could even include a welcome video from their new manager or team), but be careful to not ask them to do any actual (unpaid!) work before their first day.
To begin creating those human connections, tell your team about the new hire and encourage them to connect with them on LinkedIn. Basically,don’t ghost your new team member during this waiting period 👻
Focus: Ensuring access to the virtual office; Meeting the team
The first day should be all about making sure your new team member can access everything they need to access and get a tour of the virtual office, including meeting key team members. Start and end the first day with a call with their manager, who can personally talk them through their onboarding list. Have a few tasks ready for them to work on (e.g. Learn to use our project management tool) but also be prepared for technical difficulties and things being pushed to day two.
Focus: New hire learns about the company, who’s who and how things are done at an organisational level
While it’s really tempting to throw your new hire into the deep end and just have them “start working”, it’s crucial you allow them the time to learn all about your organisation, values, mission and culture - all while making time to make those human connection. The first week should be a good mix of scheduled calls, learning about different departments and roles, and working through their pre-prepared onboarding material allowing them to discover things like their new company’s mission and values, or more practical learning like how to book PTO. This is also the time to make sure the new hire is perfectly clear on their onboarding plan and goals, so that they know what is expected of them at the end of their first week, month or quarter.
Focus: New hire learns about their department; New hire learns how to do their specific role.
Once your new hire understands how the business operates overall, it’s time for a deep dive into their department and role. Make sure to ease them in, allowing them to read documentation first and depending on their role, perhaps work on mock work before unleashing them onto clients. A good thing to remember here is to integrate practical work with documentation and opportunities to ask questions.
Focus: New hire begins fulfilling their roles and responsibilities
Continuing on from your second week, the new hire will progress through their onboarding and gradually take on more responsibility. Make sure your team and the new hire’s line manager are patient and available for questions during this phase. While you by no means need daily check-in calls at this point, make sure progress through the onboarding process is tracked here to spot any gaps in the process, or additional support needs.
Focus: New hire becomes a fully integrated part of the team; New hire and their manager co-create personal growth plan within the organisation and set quarterly/annual goals.
At the end of their 3-month onboarding period, your new hire should be a fully integrated member of your team. At this point make sure to check those success metrics you defined and collect feedback on the process from your new hire and their team. This is also the time the (now not-so-new) hire and their line manager should co-create goals and plans for growth within the company.
To get new hires up to speed quickly and efficiently, create a modular onboarding system that utilises automation, templates and structure while also fostering real human connections. Define how you will measure the success of your onboarding system, create feedback mechanisms and work on continuously improving your new hire onboarding experience. And of course, don't forget to think about pre-boarding and the new team member's transition out of the onboarding process.
