When it comes to virtual onboarding, make a good first impression. What is true for humans is also true for businesses. The image and effect should be stellar, whether they are introducing a new product or hiring new staff.
According to a study, employees that had a positive onboarding experience were able to contribute to the team in only one week. With our whole lives moving online, a streamlined and organized virtual onboarding procedure is more important than ever.
The best onboarding programs assist new hires in settling into their jobs and provide them with a road map for the following three days, three weeks, or three years. Empactivo’s onboarding approach deserves praise for its effectiveness in exposing new hires to the company’s culture and core principles on day one. It also reduces the likelihood of any issues occurring throughout the onboarding process. To see a sample, just click here! The purpose of the onboarding procedure is to provide the groundwork for a productive working relationship between the firm and the new hire.
1) Be Adaptable – Virtual Onboarding
In order to propel the professional growth of all employees, including professionals, recent graduates, and those now employed, we need to define productivity in a much wider sense, encompassing cooperation, learning, and wellness. There has to be some leeway in terms of when, where, and how individuals put in their hours alongside all of this. The most valuable lesson for recruiting and managing staff over the last two years has been the need of being adaptable. While it’s recommended to have a well-structured onboarding procedure for new employees, it’s also crucial to provide them time off in between responsibilities.
Explain that you will work at their speed and invite them to contact you if they are experiencing any difficulties. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have deadlines; rather, it means you should only impose them when absolutely necessary.
One of the finest methods to acquire a qualitative rather than quantitative outcome with new workers is to be flexible with them. Keep in mind that the focus should be on the learning process, not the final product.
2) Give Them a Digital Buddy
Although new recruits are provided with a wealth of paperwork and tools, their natural curiosity will cause them to ask questions as they learn more about their position. Having to ask the boss every time might be embarrassing, but that’s where your digital pal comes in handy.
So, what qualities do buddies need to have?
In the workplace, a “buddy” is someone who helps new hires feel comfortable asking any and all questions.
- If you’re looking for a buddy, choose someone who has:
1) Adequate familiarity with the position being filled
2) Successful work results
3) Capacity to take of new recruits
Employee “buddy” acts as a companion and advisor while you get used to your new workplace. They find solutions and facilitate the new hire’s integration into the firm and its culture. When a new employee has a question or concern, they may turn to their Buddy, who then acts as a trusted confidant and friend across the rest of the workplace. This makes the onboarding process much less stressful and more fun for everyone involved.
To have a companion is a great assistance. Get free checklists and anything else you need to implement an onboarding buddy program at your firm.
3) Know the Importance of Little Achievements
Most new hires approach their new positions with enthusiasm and a desire to excel. The other side of this is that they show up to their first meeting with coworkers and mentors filled with anxiety and self-doubt. You may assist them get over it by giving them manageable chores and short-term goals to work toward. Take the case of salespeople as an illustration. Rather than setting a target that is impossible to achieve and will only lead to disappointment, you and your customer might agree that your first-week objective will be to schedule a meeting. They will feel empowered and motivated to keep improving after reaching this milestone.
Motivating them to do something as simple as having a daily virtual coffee with a coworker may go a long way toward helping them achieve their performance objectives.
4) Be Methodic, Use Automation
Multiple iterations of paperwork, training, group meetings, one-on-one time with the new recruit, orientation, and paperwork might all be part of a virtual onboarding process. Both the new recruit and the HR department will benefit from a methodical approach to navigating the onboarding process.
Automation using software and existing tools is a smart choice for saving time and effort. For HR managers at expanding businesses, who are always juggling a number of jobs with onboarding, this is a godsend. Even dedicated onboarding managers shouldn’t spend a lot of time doing repetitive tasks like sending out meeting invitations and emails or setting up the same software. Rather, today’s people operations teams rely on data and their own expertise to make decisions. When striving to provide a flawless digital onboarding experience, automation should be a top priority. With automation, you can set up smart systems once and forget about the stress of rushing at the last minute. In addition, you won’t have to go through the trouble of starting again every time you bring on a new employee. There’s no denying that it outperforms manual onboarding in terms of efficiency, speed, and consistency. The extra time you have maybe spent getting to know the new recruit and laying the groundwork for a strong working relationship right away.
5) Use Teamwork Equipment – Virtual Onboarding
A successful virtual onboarding procedure will also include extensive workflow integration. Slack, Asana, and Microsoft Teams are all appropriate applications for this purpose. Here, the team often congregates for group brainstorming sessions and one-on-one interactions with the rest of the organization’s employees. Slack boasts that its internal chat system is three times more efficient at getting work done than email. You may organize events like these to ease their transition into these groups:
Make sure all new users get their own chat room. Create long-lasting relationships with them via icebreakers and laid-back gatherings.
6) Become More Than Just Friends – Virtual Onboarding
Meetings and Slack messages may not be enough to get to know a new recruit on a personal level. One method of doing this is to do follow-ups on unscheduled one-on-one encounters.
You may do the same by arranging for them to speak with or play games with members of other teams or other departments.
Building a personal relationship requires little effort, such as B. sending a message every so often to check whether they enjoy the company.
7) Create the Most Enjoyable New-user Experience Possible
But in all seriousness, let’s discuss how you experiment with resources and concepts to design an onboarding process that the new employee will never forget. Our recommendations are listed below.
Inquire about making an engaging introduction video. Gather some questions from the group and use them as props to spice things up. The questions may be as outlandish as, “What was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid?” or “What was your favorite hobby when you were a kid?” or “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Plan an enjoyable outing for everyone. The new employees might participate in a yoga session or a game of “Truth or Dare” designed to let them meet and get to know their coworkers.
When workers dine together, they tend to stick together. When people work from home, they miss the office lunch breaks when they could easily chat with their coworkers and build relationships. The good news is that we can have virtual lunches together as often as we want, even if we can’t eat our coworker’s mom’s cooking. Use a welcome sign as a prop in a game of Icebreaker It’s common to associate the term “icebreaker” with lighthearted and conversation-starting inquiries.
Conclusion
Keep the enjoyable aspect, but make a welcome board instead of asking each other questions. The new employee is instructed to look at a board depicting the team members’ interests, quirks, and other personal information and determine who each item belongs to. Everyone agreed that this seemed like a great idea for a guessing game.