How to onboard employees remotely | 6-step orientation process for onboarding WFH hires

Are you enjoying the benefits of remote working but not sure about the best approach to onboard new employees? Don’t worry, we’ve got a 6-step orientation process to help you fast-track your remote hires.

Everyone was sceptical of remote working until it became a necessity, and now, for many businesses, it’s become normality. It eliminates the need for employees to commute, it’s allowing companies to be greener and more efficient as the waste and cost associated with an office space is eliminated, and it makes the talent pool you’re fishing from with recruitment drives that much bigger.

However, the onboarding processes for most businesses were developed when you had people in the office. You could literally say “Hi” to the new person and give them a buddy to shadow for the day, circulate them around various departments, and feel secure in the knowledge that they were “bedded in.”

Ultimately, if you want to keep benefiting from the advantages many companies enjoy on the work from home approach, you need to develop an onboarding process robust enough to support that. That’s where our 6-step orientation process comes in.

1. Assess and address their technology needs prior to their start date

Before the new employees begin, make sure their remote work setup is ready for them to hit the ground running. Send them the necessary equipment and software, and provide appropriate support in case they encounter any issues setting up.

If you’re hiring specifically for a work from home position, or a position with a remote option to be agreed upon, make testing their internet speed a part of the recruitment process.

2. Use video conferencing for a kick-off meeting

Any new hire’s first day should start with a virtual kick-off meeting to introduce them to the team, company culture, and the goals associated with their new role. This helps foster a sense of belonging right from the start line.

3. Use gamified onboarding to help them learn the company, the mission, and their role

Gamification applies game mechanics to everyday tasks to enhance user engagement. As a tool for remote onboarding where employees will need to be autonomous in their learning, gamified courses are probably the most appropriate modern solution.

You can easily customise long form, multi-step courses that employees can play through to learn your company’s history and culture, the various policies they’ll have to adhere to, as well as having modules specific to their roles. You can use Quizzes with intermediate video content to pose simulations to test what they’ve learned, and how they’re applying it, giving you quantifiable confidence in how prepared they are to work on a project for real, and interact with clients.

Pro tip: Working from home isn’t always easy, so a gamified course, or even a module or 2 as part of your broader gamified onboarding, could focus on remote working best practices. Simple tips such as taking a walk in the middle of the day, getting fresh air before and after work, and how to optimise a working area could all go a long way to help new staff settle in, particularly those used to working onsite.

4. Get them to fill in relevant paperwork

Just because they’re not in the office down the hall doesn’t mean you can skipping dotting the I-s and crossing the T-s: you still need to get all that new starter paperwork sorted out to make sure they’re on the right tax code and you have their bank details correct to get them onto payroll.

The beauty of the internet age is that this can all be done digitally now. No printing, no posting, and no waiting on the mail. So long as it all gets done.

Pro tip: Include links to these as CTAs in gamified onboarding courses. These would be particularly appropriate to include when they’re learning about the management structure, how payroll works, or what a week at the company looks like.

You could even include a code on the submission pages of the required forms on your website that unlock subsequent levels of the experience. This is truly gamifying the whole onboarding process, and creating extra incentives to ensure everything that must get completed gets completed.

5. Make your new hires a part of team building as soon as possible

Integrate new employees into team-building activities early to help them build strong relationships with other team members. Consider virtual icebreakers, collaborative projects, or team challenges to foster camaraderie and cooperation.

Pro tip: When you work remotely, you’re not bound by postcodes or even time zones, so your people might be scattered all over the place, making team building more challenging.

This is where regular gamification can go a long way. Because modern gamified experiences can be shared by a direct link, you could look to hold monthly, or even fortnightly Quizzes or games hours where people can unwind, and compete and interact in the slightly less formal digital setting.

These games and Quizzes could be customised to focus on things like problem solving, creativity, or around specific subjects which while not directly focused on work, could target skills and aptitudes which could improve employee performance.

6. Consistent check-ins right up to their first quarter performance review

This one’s a no brainer. You should be checking in with your employees regularly even if they’re not onsite or in the office, but when the work is remote, it’s doubly important to schedule regular check-ins to see how it’s going. Is the role as they expected? Are they settling in okay? If they’ve not encountered it before, how are they finding the work from home lifestyle? Do they feel like they could use more support?

These check-ins or performance reviews should be recorded and collated, as ultimately, the work from home revolution and its best practices are still evolving, and nuanced across industries, so you’ll learn more and be able to inform your evolving strategy.

Key takeaway

Operating a business remotely comes with a lot of benefits, but also offers real challenges, one of the biggest among them being onboarding. Taking a trained employee and having them do their job from home isn’t overly difficult – they’re already trained, so you just need to facilitate the transition, but taking someone completely new and showing them how to do a new job can be understandably daunting for all parties.

However, with our 6-step guide, you’ve got the blow-by-blow of how to make remote onboarding work, no matter your industry.