Remote workplaces continue to challenge Human Resources professionals. Onboarding new employees without welcoming them to their new office is a stand-out in a sea of issues surrounding the new remote workforce. How can you master virtual onboarding and make a new employee feel part of your company culture when in-person meetings are out the window?
Virtual onboarding at its core is sharing a company’s mission, explaining the bread-and-butter of everyday requirements, and making sure your new employee has access to the tools they need to grow into their role. Luckily, all of those things can be managed with a little online configuration.
Videos Get the Message Across
Do you use video in your onboarding? An incredibly effective means of communication, short videos are great at holding an employee’s attention and getting across important bullet points without being dry, eye-crossing lists of information. Moving some of your boilerplate messaging — things like benefits enrollment and education — to video can help your employees grasp key concepts about their compensation package without the help of face-to-face meetings or orientation.
Team Chats Break the Ice
Video conferences are another great solution for new hire onboarding, especially when initially meeting their team. A quick video chat allows employees to share key communication traits about one another: eye contact, tone of voice, laughter, and expressions can all prep employees for how to read messages and emails from one another later. A dry sense of humor doesn’t play well over Slack for the first time — better to get those things hashed out as face-to-face as possible!
Set Up Mentors
Cold-calling strangers around the company for answers can be daunting. Work with your teams to find a company mentor for each new hire — someone who can answer any question or set up ice-breaker emails for potential partnerships. Once your employee has developed their own contact lists and learned to work their way through the company directory, the mentor can provide a helping hand with staying clear on business goals.
Provide Documentation
Because on-boarding to a new job can be an overwhelming process, your new employees will probably need to access basic information again. Make it easy for them to find information on company culture, rules, benefits, time and pay, and other work necessities with an online hub that houses documentation on all of these important topics.
Virtual onboarding isn’t the ideal way to welcome new employees, but with the right tech and a clear plan, it can be just as warm a welcome as the first day at the office — perhaps with fewer jitters! Leveraging video whenever possible, offering a mentor, and documenting everything covered so employees can access information again and again, will provide your new hires with an onboarding experience they can feel good about.
WBD offers solutions for virtual onboarding through our benefits administration platforms. Your company can house your onboarding videos and documentation, plus employee-facing benefits documentation, in one convenient website. The convenient, multi-faceted Supersite is one of our most popular products, with good reason! Learn more about all of the ways WBD supports your HR department and employees here.