Remote Onboarding in Times of COVID-19
COVID-19 has changed our way of working. Since March 2020, most of us are working remotely and some colleagues have not seen our offices even once. In this time until February 2021, more than fifty new colleagues joined ProSiebenSat.1 Tech Solutions, three of them in our Project & Portfolio Management team. Usually in the beginning, we take some time for structured onboarding meetings and many topics can be clarified in passing as we meet in our office or the coffee kitchen regularly. In the beginning, we could not imagine how this would work in a pure remote situation. We were surprised how good this goes if you approach it mindfully. Even better, the remote situation for us acted like a catalyst and made visible what really constitutes a good onboarding.
As result of a good onboarding we expect that new colleagues:
• get the required knowledge and take over the intended role and tasks,
• get a good orientation of the company structure and relevant processes,
• know where to get help whenever a question or problem occurs,
• become respected members of their team,
• feel welcome and want to stay in their new team.
Imparting job referred knowledge still works well as all information is available on a collaboration platform and onboarding check lists help not to forget important topics from team up to company level. In the remote situation we instead identified the soft factors as the most challenging:
• Getting to know new colleagues usually requires explicitly scheduled meetings.
• Understanding messages between the lines as well as jokes and irony are difficult if you do not know the colleagues in real life.
• Feeling the spirit in the teams and the company culture is cumbersome.
• It is very difficult to understand the informal structure as most of the interpersonal communication is hidden for a newbie.
• The way how teams are spread over buildings and offices usually helps to understand the company structure.
- Every interaction requires some kind of collaboration tools.
What helped us to onboard successfully? The onboarding of a completely new colleague starts a few weeks before the first working day. A team member who acts as mentor during the onboarding and me as the disciplinary team lead welcome the new colleague by e-mail, provide first information and answer questions as we would do without a virtual start also. What is different is the first contact with the team via video conferencing. While in the first remote onboardings the colleagues started with their private computers and we met one or two days later on our campus in Unterfoehring, in the meanwhile the newbies get a parcel with their company laptop and instruction how to setup and login. Serafina Kümpfbeck (28, Scrum Master) was impressed: “I was ready to work from day one at 8:15 a.m.. We started with a welcome workshop in my team where we tried out different methods such as check in questions, personal maps or workshop energizers. So, I got to know my new colleagues as a person right from the beginning.” A nice side effect is that we as a team get to know each other better with every new team member, too!
Also, on the first day, the mentor and I take our time to exchange expectations and wishes and to give first orientation regarding the product or project team, ProSiebenSat.1 as organization, cultural specialties, communication in our company and where to find the most important information. Besides the videoconference, an online whiteboard and an online Kanban board are our most important tools: We use the whiteboard to visualize expectations and a timeline what becomes relevant when in the probation time. That helps to reflect the progress from time to time. The Kanban board helps to send our new colleagues on a quest with a collection of links, names, tasks, and team related questions such as “How many dogs belong to the team?”, “Who has the longest way from home to the office?”, “Who knows the most foreign languages?” or “With whom do you share which hobbies?”. With those inspirations, exploring the new job and its environment becomes an exciting adventure including several ideas what to talk about in virtual coffee breaks with the colleagues. Alina Thurmayr (29, Scrum Master) joined us in May 2020: “I appreciate the intensive accompaniment by Peter Müller as mentor and agile coach and my TeamLead Christoph Kloth as well as the well-prepared tasks in the Kanban board. With enough self-initiative it is easily possible to get in touch with the many warm and helpful colleagues at ProSiebenSat.1. It helps a lot that the video is switched on in calls all the time.” We are convinced the better and faster a newbie gets connected to colleagues from different departments, the better she or he will feel as part of the community — and be able to create value for the company. To foster this kind of networking, we encourage our new team members to drink virtual coffees not only with project related colleagues but also with many others as well as our Division Leads and Managing Directors. Get together events like our monthly “We * together @ Virtual PTS” (https://karriere.prosiebensat1.com/blog/we-together-virtual-pts), our open space event “BeST @ P7S1” or one-on-one formats like our “Mystery Café” help to substitute the missing networking impact of coffee kitchens.
Taking over the job you are hired for in the remote situation is more challenging. In a bigger office you are usually not alone. It is easy to ask questions directly and colleagues will just address things that come to their mind as important for you. This usually will not happen in scheduled online meetings. To compensate this, we give more time to take over the job and motivate new colleagues to take their time to observe and ask many questions. Therefore, virtual coffees with team members, job shadowing with colleagues of the same or related roles in different teams, pair programming, code reviews or the participation in team, division and company overarching meetings help a lot. Especially in the beginning, it does not matter if the newbie can contribute to the meetings. It is an important opportunity to get to know many colleagues, to observe relationships between persons and teams, and to understand the informal networks in the company.
Participating our company wide onboarding event or trainings of our P7S1 Academy, which in the meantime mostly are available remote also, additionally helps to create an overview, new perspectives and a valuable network. Colleagues in the agile roles Scrum Master, Product Owner or Developer get the offer to join our internal six months apprentice program, which is a self-organized learning journey based on the learning objectives of the Scrum Alliance and supported by some mentors and agile coaches. To make the first steps easier, we arrange get-to-know-meetings with the team and then encourage the new colleagues to actively pull those opportunities themselves.
