Onboarding remote team members: best practices
The COVID-19 pandemic has enforced the trend of remote employment, with more and more companies navigating the new reality with partially or fully remote teams. While discussions about whether work can be fully remote or not are still intense on LinkedIn and other professional forums, it is clear that, at least to a certain extent, this is going to be the new norm. At Wrike, we have many successful fully remote team members, but onboarding remote employees presents a number of new challenges that our company (and most definitely other organizations) have to face. Today we will discuss some of these challenges as the ways that have worked for us to provide the best virtual onboarding experience.
Let’s start by providing an overview of common remote onboarding challenges.
Team members don’t have an opportunity to ask questions at any time
While one may argue that in the modern digital world, a question can be instantly asked through a Slack message or email, it is still obvious that this cannot be truly compared to turning your head to the right or left and getting the answer directly from your manager or an experienced team member. We’re all busy and often have a large backlog of unread emails, messages, and notifications. This has a negative impact on the speed of learning, whether we’re talking about product knowledge, understanding the company’s processes, or another area of expertise.
Team members get less peer support
Even when the manager is away or busy, team members who have been in the role for a while usually jump in to help, answer any questions, and share best practices. They also share the challenges they were facing when they started which is often a big relief for newcomers, as they feel that everyone has gone through the same onboarding process and had similar roadblocks. Without peer support, the level of stress may be higher for the newcomer which may have a negative impact on the speed of learning.
The self-learning materials may not be perfect
The key difference between having a dedicated trainer and learning the product, the role, and the company processes on their own is that the trainer is there to clarify anything that may be confusing and direct the employee to the right path. When the company relies too much on its self-learning materials, such as articles in the help center, e-learning courses, or other resources, there’s a risk that the employee will not understand the information correctly. Or they may choose to skip the part that they couldn’t figure out on their own. As a result, their knowledge at the end of the onboarding process may be incomplete and/or have inaccuracies that, could negatively impact their results.
Employees don’t hear the latest news
There’s a much higher probability that the latest news, important and not very important, may be missed if a team member is not present in the office. We all know how it goes with global company chats (e.g. in Slack) — messages pop up one after another and it’s easy to miss something important. Even if the employee notices the message, they may be distracted by something and never come back to it.
Employees don’t have access to office perks
While free snacks and table tennis are probably not very important for the onboarding process in general, all the watercooler informal discussions help the newcomer to understand the company culture, what’s acceptable and what’s not, and get to know their colleagues. Yes, the company may have various policies and codexes, but let’s face the fact — how much information did you digest when you were reading such a document the last time? Probably you grasped some critical items — but often the devil is in the details.
Team members may feel lonely
While those who consciously apply for a remote position usually understand what it entails, they could feel lonely every now and then. When they jump on team meetings, they hear their colleagues laughing at internal jokes that were born in the office. They learn about office meetings that were very helpful and on which a lot of useful information was shared. These and other situations could contribute to the feeling that they’re missing out on a lot by not being in the office with their colleagues.
Now that we have discussed the challenges, let’s talk about the tips for onboarding remote employees.
Reserve more time
The first and probably the most important recommendation is to reserve more time to educate and coach remote team members. Make sure that you schedule additional time to check their progress, provide guidance, and explain any moments that might be confusing. To ensure that they receive all the necessary support, put additional one-hour blockers on the calendar for this purpose. Some weeks, you may not need to use the full slot and can finish earlier. However, having that time reserved you will enforce consistent progress. If you have a large group of remote team members being onboarded simultaneously, consider doing weekly office hours for them. Highlight that while these meetings are not mandatory, it’s in the employee’s best interest to attend them to confirm that they’re on the right track and to get any questions answered. On a separate note, I would recommend having additional informal short meetings just to get to know them better, so their conversations with managers are not be exclusively work-related.
Organize informal peer meetings
Having an employee-manager barrier is another factor that you need to take into account. While you as a leader may have the best intentions, newcomers might be hesitant to constantly reach out to you with questions since they may think that you would perceive them as incapable of figuring things out on their own. To address this issue, consider asking your experienced team members to have separate informal one-on-one meetings with the new employees. They may feel less pressure and have a relaxed open discussion on what they’re having problems with. I’ve seen multiple times in my team how this approach worked very well and, at the end of the onboarding process, team members shared how valuable these conversations with their peers were. Another argument for having such meetings is the timezone factor. Many companies (including Wrike) have international teams with employees working in every possible location — from the US and Europe to Japan and Australia. In such situations, the manager’s ability to help and support employees would be limited to a few hours per week. So getting the help of experienced team members from the same timezone (or, at least, the one that is closer) is very helpful.
Consistently improve your self-learning materials
Self-onboarding materials –articles, playbooks, e-learning courses, tutorial videos, and others — play a major role in the onboarding experience. You need to check regularly that they’re kept up to date and do not contain confusing and misleading information. Even if they were close to being perfect a couple of years ago, it is still important to review them periodically. Your product has been evolving over these years, the processes have been changing, and policies have been updated. While you and your team members might be very up-to-date with the changes, the materials might’ve remained unchanged. Also, conduct a survey among the team members who have recently finished the onboarding process to find out how helpful the materials were and what could be improved. For example, here at Wrike, we have a great interactive e-learning course for the employees that covers critical parts of the product that the newcomers need to complete. However, after completing onboarding I noticed that the employees had similar knowledge gaps in specific areas of our product. I decided to take the initiative and review the e-learning myself and discovered that those areas weren’t covered in detail in it. So I reached out to our customer education team and asked them to update the course and include a deep dive into these topics.
Send swag and other items to remote employees
Team members who work remotely are already missing a lot by not being close to the core of the team in the office. Small gestures, such as sending additional company swag, ordering sweets and fruit, etc., contribute to the feeling that they’re not alone. They understand that they’re part of a team that cares for them, and these little symbols do matter. I remember when there was a delay in sending a one-year Wrike hoodie to one of the remote team members during the COVID time, and that team member was actually concerned about it and asked multiple times when she was going to receive it. Many people might consider such things minor and unimportant. But they matter and employees notice when the company cares and when it doesn’t.
Explore opportunities to meet in person
Regardless of how powerful the technology that enables employees to communicate and collaborate with their team members online, it would never fully substitute for in-person relationships and communication. With that in mind, consider bringing remote team members to meet their peers and leadership at company events, and if possible, outside of such events. For example, you could fly the employee to the nearest office for several days just for them to work next to their colleagues, share those big and small moments, and feel as a part of the team. This experience pays off well in the long term and contributes to employee loyalty, and, as a result, retention.
Accumulate feedback from onboarded remote employees
Last, but not least — the process of remote onboarding should be something you need to be continuously improving. The best way to understand what worked and what didn’t is to ask employees who have recently finished the process. Prepare a list of meaningful questions that cover all aspects of the process, from the clarity of onboarding materials to the level of support they received from their trainers, peers, and leadership. Process the responses, discover common flaws that have been communicated, and work on improvements. Do not accept general feedback such as “all was well.” Even if the sentiment was 100% positive, ask what exactly was extremely helpful and what was just “good” or “decent”.
As you can see, many aspects of remote onboarding mirror those of the regular on-site onboarding process. However, the devil is in the details. And by paying attention to such details you ensure that remote employees have an excellent onboarding experience, get up to speed quickly, and become superstars.
