How to onboard remote employees: part two
In this part two, we continue the conversation about onboarding remote employees, while also taking a look at how to make new hires feel comfortable with and adjust to the company culture. Culture is, after all, a fundamental aspect to the success of your company, so making sure your new hire understands and shares the culture is vital.
How do you get new hires up to speed with your company tools and processes?
With new tools, there are two ways to introduce employees to them.
For the first tier (basic tools) such as Slack, Trello, and Google Apps, we expect the person to pick-up those tools by themselves. We also know that with these tools, there are plenty of tutorial videos available online.
Then there’s the second tier, more complicated tools or those not used as often, such as Intercom, Mailchimp, and Mixpanel. Even if the person has used the tools before, the way they’re utilized is different in each company, so the new hire should learn how it’s specifically used in your company. For example, both Intercom and Mixpanel rely on very company-specific rules and triggers that have to be understood.
For these more complicated tools, we have documents that walk through how our company uses the tool; for example, the NewCampus standard guide book to Intercom.
If after reading the guidebook the person still has questions (which they likely do!), there’s always someone on the team available to walk them through it — this is when Zoom is useful, as you can share screens while on a video call, making walk-throughs super easy.
If it’s a tool that the new employee will be using a lot, such as Hubspot if they’re in a sales role, their function lead will take them through the tool in a much more in-depth manner. For this, we set up a one-on-one and really walk through how the tool is used.
We all agree that the easiest, and really best, way for someone to learn a tool is to play around and learn it by themselves. Once they navigate through all the possible uses/functions/features, they’ll have a much deeper understanding. This ties back to our company culture as well, we’re all about supporting independent and constant learning.
How do you ensure that new hires fit in with the culture?
I think as I’ve mentioned before, culture is super important to us, and it’s just as important that everyone on our team understands and believes in the culture. We practice a few ways of helping new employees to get settled in and familiar with who we are and how we work.
First, we have a buddy system for every new hire — a kind of personal mentor within the company. And this something I suggest for every startup!
The new hire is partnered with someone they may not normally work with— for example, a social media marketer and backend developer. We want to ensure that everyone on the team talks to each other, even if their roles don’t overlap much.
So the buddy system is:
- Making sure everyone knows everyone
- Helping the new hire create their first friendship on the team
Their conversations aren’t meant to be work related, but more personal matters — asking them how they’re settling in, if they’re preparing to move (our team moves around a lot) can the buddy be of any help, that sort of thing.
We even keep this going after the first few weeks with a great Slack bot, Donut Buddy Forever. This Slack bot randomly pairs two people every two weeks and helps them schedule a time to meet for either a coffee, donut, or burger. It’s a great way to make sure everyone’s staying in touch!
The second thing we do is 14 day and 30 day check in sessions with one of the founders. They’ll reach out to the new hire and setup these two meetings.
The main goals of the meetings are:
- To check in on how they feel about company culture, if they have any questions, and if they’re feeling comfortable with how things operate
- To discuss questions they may have about their role, making sure they fully understand what they’re supposed to do and how it fits into the NewCampus family
There are also a lot of random check-ins (both video and text chatting) from our Chief Happiness Officer, Isan, over the first month to make sure everything is going smoothly, from work matters to more causal, life-related things.
Because we work remotely, it’s hard to know whether someone is settling in well. On public channels in Slack, for example, they can say they’re doing alright, but they may feel uncomfortable saying they’re lost at the beginning, so we do multiple one-on-ones to make sure things are going smoothly.
What are the signs that the onboarding is going well?
A good indicator that someone is fitting into NewCampus is when that person feels comfortable being themselves in the weekly team meetings.
We have weekly meetings where we come together on Zoom to talk about how we’re doing, what OKRs we’re focusing on for the week, and any help needed. If the new hire is comfortable in these calls, and is pretty open, we know things are going well. Another sign is that they’re vocal in public Slack channels, participating in conversations and making comments here and there.
In terms of role — at the 30 day check-in , the key takeaway is that the person understands their role, what they’re currently working on, and how it will evolve in the next six to twelve months. We also want to make sure they understand the company road map — what we’re working to achieve in both the short-term and longer-term.
How do you build rapport for new hires during the onboarding process? How do you make them feel comfortable with everyone else on the team?
In addition to the buddy matching, there’s a thing we do that I really love. It’s the Burger, Beer, or Coffee Challenge.
Within the first two weeks, the new hire has to have either a burger, beer, or coffee meeting with every team member, and then share a picture to Slack. It’s really a lot of fun — both people are sharing in something together, it’s a little goofy, and a great way to bond.
From my perspective, that’s actually the hardest thing to achieve in the whole onboarding process, especially as the team grows. It’s a lot of burgers, beers, and coffees!
Ultimately, it’s important because not everyone is going to work with everyone. Our belief is that even if you’re not working with someone on a daily basis, you should still talk. We’re all a family and we should all know each other better.
Is there anything different about onboarding remote team members?
It comes with different challenges, pros and cons.
The pros — remote onboarding can be more flexible. Because you’re physically away from someone, you have to make more time and effort to get to know them, since you’re not able to do it in the traditional way of meeting face to face.
It also allows both people, the onboarding leader and the new hire, to optimize their time and schedule meetings more efficiently. We all know the feeling of starting a new job and just sitting around on the first day.
But when you have your first day with a remote job, you have a much better idea of what’s expected of you on day one. For example, day one is about getting through the onboarding and role specific Trello boards — read them, take your time to understand them, and then you’ll have a catchup call the next day to discuss.
You can also schedule multiple catchups in the first few days — a meeting with your function lead to discuss the role and operational aspects, a call with your buddy to chat more casually, and a call with another employee to get to know each other.
The only real con is that you don’t get to see that person face to face. That’s something you lose out on — we can make do with video calls, but at the end of the day, building that relationship in person really is better than over the screen.
How do you handle onboarding of new employees across time zones?
When you’re hiring someone, you’re already aware of their timezone before they formally start. Just make sure that everyone in the company is aware of the new hire’s timezone and working hours, and it’s pretty easy for everyone to make time to talk to new person.
There are a few helpful tools useful for managing time zones and planning calls:
- Google Calendar is really useful, as it makes it easy to schedule calls, and the calendar invite automatically adjusts to each individual’s time zone
- Calendly is nice for setting your availability and allows others to easily book a time that works for them
- Spacetime is a cool Slack integration, where team members can add their locations and working hours
Overall, we haven’t really had any clashes in terms of the new hire feeling uncomfortable with time zone differences.
How do you ensure onboarding information is consistent across all employees?
We keep a record of everything we do and we always do a retrospective at the end of each hiring. We ask, what could we have done better?
Our CHO will reach out to the new hire after the first month to understand how the process went — was it overwhelming? What information could we have provided at a better time? What info makes them feel more comfortable about the company?
It’s always a work in progress — we have a template, or a process, we work off of, and the template always evolves after each hire.
We’re constantly building and improving the process.
