Onboarding best practices for a remote team
Who among us has started a new job and not had major first day jitters?
Beginning a new job is, understandably, an experience that can cause some anxiety and nerves. Beginning a remote role, where you may have never met your team in person can feel even more daunting!
But, with a thoughtful onboarding process, a remote employer should be able to remove a lot of the anxiety and uncertainty when someone new joins their team. As we’ve grown our remote team, we’ve given a lot of thought to our onboarding process to create a welcoming, inclusive environment right from the get-go. This process sets our new teammates up for success so they can hit the ground running right from day one. I’m excited to share some of the best practices we use when welcoming new Dribbblers to our team!
Create an onboarding checklist
As you grow your team, the number of onboarding tasks and owners will increase! Create a centralized onboarding checklist for each new hire to ensure a smooth onboarding process and make sure nothing important gets missed. Once a new hire has signed their paperwork, we use BambooHR to automatically assign onboarding tasks to the right company contact, including people operations, accounting, the new hire themselves, and their hiring manager. Work closely with your hiring managers to make sure they are clear on their to-dos, such as creating 30–60–90 plans and scheduling first-day intro meetings.
An onboarding checklist ensures that when new hires begin they are already set up with their laptop, including all the necessary apps and logins, and have some meetings on the calendar. With these items in place, new hires will feel ready to jump in rather than spending their first few days trying to get everything set up.
Implement an onboarding buddy program
When we started growing our team, we quickly found that new hires felt confused about where to find information, and who to ask about what. To make sure new Dribbblers had a support system to help them navigate our culture and find helpful information, we created an onboarding buddy system.
Now, as soon as a new hire has accepted their job offer, we introduce them to their onboarding buddy. This onboarding buddy is often someone on a different team, so the new hire gets an opportunity to meet with someone they wouldn’t usually work with day-to-day. The buddy schedules weekly 30-minute meetings with the new hire for their first month. Onboarding buddies help disseminate information and are an extra go-to for answering questions, alongside managers and peers.
Introduce the leadership team
As we’re still a small team, we feel it’s important for our new hires to feel connected with our leadership team. On their first day, new hires meet with the entire leadership team, including a 30 minute chat with our CEO who shares the Dribbble mission, values, and our company history. Each manager walks through their team, which part of the business they work on, and where they can be reached for questions in Slack. We’ve found this helps our new hires feel more knowledgeable about who’s who and who’s working on what, which eliminates any sense of isolation or confusion.
Clarify expectations
Especially when your team is remote, it’s crucial to clarify expectations right off the bat. With this in mind, we completely rewrote our handbook to include thorough documentation on our mission, values, facts that matter about working here, what life is like at Dribbble, all of our time off policies, our perks, and more! Outlining these types of detailed documentation gives new teammates a chance to read and reference information when needed.
For example, since we lean so heavily on Slack to communicate, we have an entire onboarding section called “How to Slack Successfully” that’s dedicated to explaining Slack use and best practices. This has been especially useful for folks who might not have worked remotely or used Slack before. We have all of our onboarding buddies take their new hire through our Slack channels, share how to use Bonusly to give kudos to teammates, explain how and when to set their Slack status, how to use the do not disturb function, etc. We aim to leave little to interpretation so that no one is confused or feels uncomfortable.
Keep inclusion at the top of your priority list
Above all, your onboarding priority should be making sure your new hires feel connected, welcome, and included. There are plenty of studies that show employees who feel connected and engaged report much higher levels of happiness in the workplace and job satisfaction, so start off your employees with an inclusive experience. Our Slack is full of fun channels like #parenting, #books, #movies, #dogs, where we have the opportunity to connect on a more personal level about life outside of work. Spend time showing these channels to make sure new hires feel welcome chiming in!
Create opportunities to foster connections
We have all our new hires start on Mondays, which means that on their second day they get to (virtually) meet our entire team during our all-hands on Tuesdays! During these all-hands video calls we take time to introduce new hires, celebrate that they’ve joined us, and hear a little bit about where they live, any hobbies, children, pets, etc. Creating a sense of personal connection in a remote work environment, however small, goes a long way towards making people feel welcome and appreciated.
Additionally, set up a one-on-one right away with your new hire! Create open lines of communication and a scheduled time each week to catch up and make sure everything is going smoothly — this instills a culture of engagement, trust, and communication. Ultimately, by creating opportunities to bond, even virtually, you’re reinforcing and building culture right into your onboarding process. When you provide opportunities for a new hire to engage and connect, you fast-track them to becoming an integrated and productive member of your team.
If something isn’t working — change it!
As our team has grown we’ve needed to refine our onboarding process to ensure new hires are welcomed and engaged. Don’t be afraid to pivot or change something if it’s no longer effective for your team! The best source to evaluate your onboarding process will be your new hires, so check in with them after a few weeks to gather their feedback. Ask open-ended questions like if a specific process could have been done differently, or better; if they felt any information was lacking, or if they had questions that weren’t adequately answered; whether they had enough support throughout their onboarding process, and if they feel comfortable now that they’ve been with you for some time. Know that your onboarding process will need to shift as you evolve as a company, so if you hear suggestions, consider implementing them!
