Virtually onboarding new employees
The appeal of virtual onboarding in today’s work environment is obvious. With the rise of remote and hybrid working, virtual onboarding has gone from being a temporary necessity to a strategic must-have.
Organizations are no longer bound by geographical limitations, allowing them to tap into a global talent pool. However, the success of this change relies on having a solid and engaging virtual onboarding process.
What is virtual onboarding?
Virtual onboarding is the strategic process of integrating new employees into an organization remotely, using digital tools and technologies rather than physical presence. It includes all the essential steps of traditional onboarding but is done entirely or mainly online.
The goal remains the same: to give new hires the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to become productive, engaged, and successful members of your team quickly and effectively.
What is the difference between virtual and in-person onboarding?
While the goal is the same, the method and execution of virtual onboarding are significantly different from traditional methods:
Being there vs. online calls:
- In-person: New hires walk around the office, meet people face-to-face, go to live training, and fill out papers at the office. Quick chats by the coffee machine help them fit in.
- Virtual: You meet new people using video calls. Training is done online. Papers are filled out on a computer. You have to work harder to make friends and understand the team when you’re only online.
Getting information:
- In-person: You get information by talking, getting handouts, or attending meetings. You can ask questions right away.
- Virtual: Information is mostly given online through websites, training programs, shared files, and video calls. You need to keep all information in one easy-to-find place and be ready to answer questions online often.
Computer setup:
- In-person: Your computer might already be set up at your desk, and someone from IT is nearby.
- Virtual: You must carefully plan to send computers and other equipment to new hires before they start. You also need to set up their computers so they can work from home safely. Computer problems can be fixed online, so clear instructions and quick help are essential.
Learning the company culture:
- In-person: You learn about how the company works just by being there, seeing how people act, and joining casual office events.
- Virtual: You have to make a real effort to show new hires the company’s way of doing things. This can be through videos, special online lessons about values, virtual social events, or having an experienced person (a « buddy ») help them.
Why is virtual onboarding appealing to businesses?
The pandemic was a major driving factor in the initial surge of virtual onboarding, but its appeal has since grown and continues to do so. Virtual onboarding offers significant advantages that align perfectly with modern workplace expectations for flexibility and accessibility.
Expanded talent pool: One of the most compelling benefits is the ability to recruit from anywhere in the world. This eliminates geographical constraints, allowing organizations to find the best talent, regardless of their physical location.
Cost efficiency: Virtual onboarding can significantly reduce the expenses of traditional in-person onboarding. This includes savings on travel, accommodation, physical office space, and printed materials.
Flexibility and convenience: Virtual onboarding offers excellent flexibility for new hires. They can complete initial training and paperwork from the comfort of their home, often at their own pace. This can reduce the stress associated with starting a new job, allowing them to get into the swing of things more comfortably and effectively.
Greater scalability: As your organization grows, a well-designed virtual onboarding process can grow with you more easily than an in-person process. You can onboard multiple new hires at the same time, regardless of their location, making it an efficient solution for rapid expansion.
Communication in virtual onboarding
The most crucial step to ensuring your virtual onboarding succeeds is communication. When employees work alone, especially on their first days with your organization, there are fewer opportunities to ask the casual but important questions any new hire has.
Remote employees must be more deliberate about communication, and so must their employers. Create a standard set of policies and training you’ll send the employee on their first few days, and include contact information in case they have questions.
Who can help them with troubleshooting your system? Who will give them their next assignment when they finish their current task? What’s a reasonable timeline for completion? Ask recent hires what questions they had during onboarding, then design your virtual onboarding to answer them explicitly.
How to create a virtual onboarding plan
Many organizations don’t have a formal onboarding process; this usually isn’t a problem in a small business. New employees can easily be shown around the workplace as needed, and a little disorganization is quickly fixed. However, moving this non-process online presents immediate challenges. For virtual onboarding to be effective, you need a plan, and it needs to be consistent.
Here are some things to consider when developing your virtual onboarding plan.
Develop a roadmap: Outline the onboarding journey from before they start to their first few months. This roadmap should include:
- Activities to do before they start: What must happen before their first day? (e.g., IT setup, sending welcome packs, initial paperwork).
- First day/week plan: Detailed schedule of meetings, introductions, and initial training.
- First month plan: Key objectives, project assignments, and continued learning opportunities.
- Ongoing support: How will continuing support and development be provided?
Standardize the process: Create a standardized onboarding process that makes sure every new hire receives the same experience. This includes using templates for communication or assigning roles and responsibilities to different team members.
Shared understanding and collaboration: Onboarding is rarely a one-person job, even in small businesses, so everyone needs to understand their part in the process and when they’ll need to contribute. Regular communication and alignment between different teams and departments are crucial.
Use technology: Virtual onboarding platforms and tools can streamline the process. These platforms can automate tasks, track progress, provide a central archive for resources, and help with communication. Features like automated reminders, progress tracking, and content bundling are handy.
What to look out for when switching to virtual onboarding
While virtual onboarding has many advantages, transitioning from traditional methods or simply adopting a new virtual approach requires careful consideration. Organizations must proactively address potential challenges to help with a smooth and successful integration for every new hire.
1. The risk of disconnection and isolation
Building a genuine human connection is one of the biggest challenges in a virtual environment. New hires may feel isolated, especially if they work remotely and don’t get a chance to have the informal interactions that happen in the office.
- What to look out for: A decline in engagement in virtual meetings, minimal participation in team chats, or new hires not asking questions.
- What can you do: Consider using a « buddy » or mentor system, encourage regular informal video calls, organize virtual social events, and introduce them to other departments in the organization.
2. Technical glitches
Virtual onboarding heavily relies on technology. Technical issues can quickly sour the experience, leading to frustration for the new hire and your IT department.
- What to look out for: Delays in equipment delivery, difficulties with software installation or access, poor internet connectivity for new hires, or a lack of clear IT support.
- What can you do: Make sure all necessary equipment is sent and set up before their start date. Give detailed, easy-to-follow IT setup guides and troubleshooting resources. Designate a dedicated IT point of contact for new hires.
Information overload
Organizations might accidentally overwhelm new hires with too much information, in an attempt to cover everything quickly. This will not be conducive to their training and could cause them to have gaps in their knowledge, making them unable to do their job efficiently.
- What to look out for: New hires expressing confusion about where to find information, feeling overwhelmed by the volume of material, or struggling to retain key information.
- What can you do: Structure information into modules. Prioritize critical information for the first few days and weeks, slowly introducing the less urgent content. Centralize all resources in a user-friendly knowledge base or onboarding platform. Use interactive learning tools (quizzes, scenarios) rather than bland documents.
Difficulty in creating company culture
Getting across your company culture – the unspoken rules, values, and norms – can be challenging when the only interactions you’ve had thus far are online.
- What to look out for: New hires struggling to understand team dynamics, missing social cues, or not aligning with the company’s informal communication style.
- What can you do: Openly communicate your company values and culture through stories, videos, and leadership messages. Include company culture elements in training modules. Encourage participation in virtual team-building activities and give them opportunities for informal interactions with other employees across different departments.
Inconsistent experiences across departments/managers
Without a standardized virtual onboarding framework, different departments or managers might create their own processes, leading to an inconsistent and potentially inequitable experience for new hires.
- What to look out for: Varying levels of preparedness from hiring managers, inconsistent access to resources, or new hires having vastly different initial experiences based on their team.
- Mitigation: Develop a universal virtual onboarding checklist and core curriculum. Provide comprehensive training and resources for all managers involved in onboarding. Clearly define roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder in the onboarding process.
Lack of immediate feedback and support
It can be harder for managers to keep an eye on new hires’ progress and give them real-time feedback. This could potentially lead to a feeling of being « left to fend for themselves. »
- What to look out for: New hires making repeated mistakes, taking longer than expected to complete tasks, or being uncertain about their performance.
- What can you do: Schedule regular, structured check-ins. Encourage open communication and create safe spaces for new hires to ask « dumb » questions. Implement clear feedback systems and regularly ask new hires for their self-assessment.
Time zone challenges
When onboarding employees across multiple time zones, scheduling live sessions, meetings, and even communication can become tricky.
- What to look out for: Managers or team leaders being unavailable for live introductions, new hires having to attend meetings at inconvenient hours, or delays in getting responses due to time differences.
- What can you do: Record live training sessions for later viewing. Use scheduling tools that account for different time zones. Assign « local » buddies or mentors who can support the new hire during typical working hours.
Do you need help getting your onboarding process online?
We know this kind of thing can sound intimidating, but making sense of the changing world of human resources is what we do, and virtual onboarding is no different. We have thousands of documents and more than 150 online training courses you can assign to new hires, which they can complete at home or on their smartphone.
We also make it easy to organize onboarding content into bundles, track employee progress, and send reminders if something gets missed. Our Live HR Advice also connects you with senior advisors who can answer any HR question, big or small.
Employees have grown used to these options, and now that they know organizations can provide them, they’re more likely to expect them, or even demand them as candidates. To continue attracting the best employees over the long term, you’ll have to get used to employees working from anywhere. However, the silver lining to these changes is that perfecting your virtual onboarding and remote management practices lets you open up your talent pool anywhere.