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A Complete Guide To Virtual Onboarding
A Complete Guide To Virtual Onboarding
to Virtual Onboarding
A definitive handbook to
Hiring & Onboarding
Remote Teams
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
03
Introduction
04 07
What exactly is Virtual Implementing virtual
Onboarding?” Onboarding
18 21
Introducing Tools for
Pre-boarding Pre-boarding
& Onboarding
30
Onboarding
Checkllist
02
Introduction
Introduction
William R. Tracey, in "The Human Resources Glossary," defines
Human Resources as: "The people that staff and operate an
organization," as contrasted with the financial and material
resources of an organization. Therefore, we can consider that HR
is all about people.
What is HR? What are the best practices? How do you Onboard
employees? How to increase employee retention? This book will
guide you through all these and multiple other questions that
pop up in the mention of virtual Onboarding and HR.
Arpit Mishra
Co-Founder & CEO
Beamfox.Inc
arpit@beamfox.io
03
Breaking misconceptions
Breaking Misconceptions
A recent study by Glassdoor found that great employee
Onboarding, can improve employee retention by 82% and
increase productivity by over 70%. Those are big numbers to
achieve even on regular days.
Read: Reference:
What Is a Human Resource? huhttps://b2b-assets.glassdoor.com/the-true-cost-of-a-
bad-hire.pdf
04
What exactly is Virtual Onboarding?
So what exactly is Virtual
Onboarding?
Onboarding is the process that you begin when an employee starts their first day
with your organisation. It's how you familiarise them with the various facets of
your company, and it can be wrapped up in a day, a week, or can stretch over
several months.
Virtual Onboarding is when you carry out this entire process online without
meeting the new employees face-to-face. The best way to carry this out is to
make the new hires feel like it's regular Onboarding—doing so requires a lot
more planning on your side, but going by the data mentioned, it's definitely
worth the effort.
One Paperwork
Three Training
Four Culture
05
4 Aspects of any Onboarding
Four aspects of any
Onboarding
Paperwork
Your leave policy, healthcare coverage, asset policies, and data
security rules, etc. It's essential to ensure that your employees
understand all of these completely.
Clarity of role
Studies have shown that one of the main reasons for high turnover
rates is that employees feel there is no room for growth, or don't
create any impact at their workplace. So to keep up an excellent
retention rate, set expectations right from the get-go by sending
your new hires a 60 or 90-day career roadmap charting out what
exactly they will be working on and what targets to achieve
(quantified clearly).
Training
Help the employee understand that they don't work in silos. To
give them a better perspective on how the company works,
demonstrations from other teams explaining their functions
make an impact. Training also helps build better inter-
departmental relationships.
Culture
When a new employee joins, they must be in line with your
company's culture. The easiest way to show them how things
work is to add them to the company intranet, where they can
observe how approachable managers are, the tone of
conversations, and how to open the company is to feedback.
06
Wordpress, the
15th most visited
website in the
world has 100%
Delivering the Once the forms are collected, you need to assign one team
Hardware responsible for recording and dispatching the necessary
assets (portable wi-fi, laptops, adapters, and SIM cards).
The term human
Having one centralized team in charge will help streamline
resources was
and track this process a lot better.
first coined in
the 1960s
02
It doesn't just stop with hardware. Setting up their official
accounts, passwords, IDs, and installing communication
tools and other apps—there's a list of things usually done
with your system administrator giving them instructions in
Setup Account person.
But in this case, you can pre-install and set up their accounts
for them before you ship the hardware, or you could conduct
a video conference where you can walk them through the
process step-by-step.
Both the hiring manager and the role buddy are sent an
email detailing what they should do to successfully onboard
the new employee. Being this thorough, once again, reduces
Co-Founder Buffer.com
Virtual Onboarding Steps
05
Now more than ever, it's easy for new employees to feel out
of touch with the company they're joining—there may be no
"sense of belonging" because they don't know the people
behind the functions.
Training
and You can follow the footsteps of Trello—depending on the
budget and feasibility—by meeting them in person and
Induction spending enough time with them to train them.
The term human
resources was
"If we hire you and we start the Onboarding process," says
first coined in
Ben McCormack, who heads their support team, "what we
the 1960s do first is spend one week with you in person. We either go
to you or — a lot of the time! — the candidate will want to get
Automattic.Inc
12
The 'Why' of virtual onboarding
1
With the current pandemic, it almost seems like
the world as we know it, may not be the same
again. Not in the wrong way—remote working
might become the new norm. Remote working has #1
proven to be much more cost-effective and even
results in increased productivity. A survey by CoSo Emergency
Cloud, reports that employees are 77% more
preparedness
productive and are 52% less likely to take time off.
Reference: https://www.cosocloud.com/press-releases/connectsolutions-survey-shows-
working-remotely-benefits-employers-and-employees
The 'Why' of virtual onboarding
14
Reference: https://www.aftercollege.com/cf/2015-annual-survey
The challenges of virtual
2
Challenge 1
1
Keeping track of
productivity
employee
Trust and productivity apart, the first few weeks are crucial for
new employees. It's essential to stay in touch with them and
make sure they have all the context they need. Once you get
them through these first weeks, they will do just fine.
2
It's a good idea to catch up with them at the end of every day
over a phone call or video chat for around 15-20 minutes, just
1 discussing their work, providing constructive feedback, and
encouraging them to be more open about their ideas. The
employee might be a highly self-motivated person, but
without feedback, growth can be slow.
Challenge 3
sense of unity
1 Challenge 4
stimulation
The best ideas are often ones that have been discussed and
built upon by multiple people. Though, in this case, there
can be no brainstorming session with everyone in the same
room; technology really can replace the need for their
physical presence.
Pre-Boarding
Introducing
Pre-boarding
The term human
resources
It looks was
like you've got the steps of your virtual Onboarding
process covered. in
first coined But Pre-boarding, regardless of remote working,
is athe
necessary
1960sprocess that will help you retain your new hires
even before they join you.
Often, there is a gap between the time they resign their current
position (if applicable) and join you. This time is cause for anxiety
for you as well as the candidate, and other companies might
approach them. So how do you make sure they don't get snatched
away?
With a remote team, you can't show them around the office or take
them out for lunch with the team. But you can take some simple
steps to show that you value them.
18
6 Steps to Pre-boarding
Pre-Boarding
Send them a welcome message
You can either do this via an email from the candidate's team or schedule a video
call to introduce the candidate to their manager and team. Welcome messages
bring a sense of belonging even before they've started working for you.
Adding them on CC to the regular work emails sent by their team, will give them an
idea of the sort of work they will be doing on a day-to-day basis once they join. It will
keep them invested in what they're going to do and can make them do more
research to be better prepared.
If it's possible to send them a welcome package, take advantage of it! There's no
better way to leave a positive and memorable first impression. A handwritten note
from their manager, a company-branded stationery kit, and a company t-shirt,
depends on your budget, but it's the effort that counts.
19
6 Steps to Pre-boarding
Pre-Boarding
Send them their schedule
Give them the schedule for their first week, once they join—their training and
induction sessions, meetings set up with other teams, etc. to show them how
seriously you take their time and growth.
Set up a channel with other new employees where they can interact with each other.
They can clear each other's questions and can help each other overcome their "first-
day" jitters. This will also help the new employees build a good rapport with people
across teams.
A coffee break video call with teams, the new employee will be working with, can be
helpful for everyone involved. Spending some time with heads of other functions will
help the new employee feel appreciated and welcomed.
20
Tools for managing virtual pre-
You've got your work cut out for you. There are quite a few
steps you need to take to nail your virtual processes and
make sure the new employee is up to speed on everything.
Naturally, you will need to use several digital apps to aid
these steps. 2
1 The sort of tools you use, makes a big difference, and you
should be sure to choose tools that suit your company's style
of working, culture, as well as your budget.
So it's all a matter of finding the right set of apps for your
company.
21
The top apps in the market that
You can also consider apps that specialize in Onboarding and Pre-
boarding processes like BambooHR or Oplift, which help you
automatically send Onboarding tasks, upload checklists, add
welcome videos, scan, and upload necessary documents.
Since you will be planning and scheduling a lot of meetings for the
new employees, you can either rely on Google Calendar or
consider apps like Calendly or HubSpot. Both of these products
have a free trial period and free versions that you can use
depending on your team's size.
22
The top apps in the market that
1 You can use apps like Zapier, and Microsoft Flow to trigger emails and
follow up alerts automatically. These apps also integrate well with tools
like Slack, Trello, and Dropbox so, you can have automatic notifications
triggered and make sure no one misses essential messages.
In addition to this, you may also need apps that will help you provide
remote assistance to your employees to set up their accounts like
TeamViewer and Zoho Assist.
23
The top apps in the market that
Apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Chanty (Free plans available for all
three) can help with quick messaging, threads that are easy to keep
track of, and apps that integrate with a wide range of other business
apps that make your work a lot easier.
You will also need apps that you can use for video conferences. Apps like
Zoom, Skype, and GoToMeeting are good options that you can consider.
These will aid you with online meetings, presentations, and webinars for
all employees. There are free plans that are available for Zoom and
Skype.
24
The top apps in the market that
Safe and simple ways of sharing files with all your employees are
crucial. Google Drive is the most popular file-sharing app, and there
are plenty of alternatives too.
Dropbox has free plans that can come in handy, and you can also
consider apps like Box and OneDrive for sharing your files on the
cloud.
Project management tools are used for individual's work status and
their progress stage.
25
8 tips to better manage virtual
It's easy to lose track of time when working from home. Contrary
to popular belief, employees end up working more at home than
at a shared workplace, simply because there's no concept of
leaving the office.
You can make this a weekly affair, picking one person from each
team, and hosting an "Employee of the week" program. Mix it up
now and then so that it doesn't become white noise.
Use video calls every chance you get—it helps teams connect
better, and this form of communication helps avoid
miscommunications when using emails or other types of written
communication.
Last but not least, make sure you hire the right people for your
organization.
This helps them observe their working style and how well the
candidate can gel with the rest of the team.
A quick checklist for a smooth
Plan and set tangible targets for the new hires, ensure that they
are satisfied with the work they're given.
Humanity has come a long way since the invention of the wheel,
2
and all through the centuries, we've been figuring out ways to
make the world a closer, smaller place.
1
The internet's design had an unprecedented influence on how the
world functions, forever changing the corporate structures across
the globe.
This also opens the talent pool a lot more, and designing an
effective virtual Onboarding process for them is crucial to make
the best use of their talents.
There will be plenty of new apps and technology that you can
use to improve this process—and if done right, your organisation
stands to grow and be part of the new future. After all, change is
the only constant thing.
Beamfox - The pre-boarding software
How Beamfox helps in pre-boarding
employees remotely.
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Conclusion
Beamfox
Beamfox, Inc.
Website: Beamfox.io
Email: contact@beamfox.io