As several companies
continue with hybrid work environments, there is an increasing need to find newer
and more innovative ways to cater to this setting. While many have cracked the
overall code, one area that still requires attention is hiring and onboarding new
employees in hybrid environment.
Fortunately,
L&D teams have stepped up to the challenge to create programs that help new
hires settle into their role sooner and enhance business productivity. Let’s
deep dive into some remote onboarding best practices that can impact the success
of your programs.
Onboarding is your
company’s first interaction and impression with the new employee, so it has to
be the best. In a hybrid work environment, it is all the more important with clear
communication becoming the cornerstone of an effective remote onboarding
process.
Regardless of your
choice of digital platform, the communication has to be consistent. If you are
able to establish your organization’s communication strategy right at the onset
with great onboarding, you will be able to help the new hire to transition more
comfortably into your company culture.
Giving the first
priority to people should be the focus of any L&D program, but it’s
seminally important when developing a remote onboarding session. Since many new
hires are perhaps experiencing such kind of onboarding for the first time, it’s
upto you to ensure that they are the centre of the entire exercise. You need to
be more clued in to their wants and needs and should provide support to them as
they adjust to their new role.
Also, as face-to-face
training is largely reduced in remote environments, it is necessary that
onboarding programs give new hires the opportunity to connect in some way with
their colleagues. If you are looking to make your new hiring successful, it’s
imperative to focus on them as humans and not just as resources.
Every organization
has a unique culture. A remote onboarding program is the best way to help the
new employees get a glimpse of it and understand it. A positive culture is at
the core of every successful organization, and new hires should be acclimatized
with your business’ landscape.
One of the best
ways to help a new employee become accustomed to your
company culture is to interact with them often in team settings. It’s best to
set up onboarding meetings that familiarise new hires to their team, and help
them learn the ins and outs of the organization’s culture.
- Digital Onboarding Experience
The last, but
perhaps the most important factor of a remote onboarding program, is to offer a
strong overall digital experience. The main step towards this is digitizing onboarding
and training materials that were perhaps in physical paper format created for office
use settings. While that cannot be used in remote onboarding, it’s not enough
to simply turn them into scanned copies.
It’s important to re-evaluate
these documents and see how they can be changed to adapt to the virtual onboarding
process. You can focus on using more audio visual material and multi-media
format that can keep your new hires engaged and interested. Once they are
engaged, chances of them retaining what they learnt is also much higher. This
will ultimately make your remote onboarding program effective and successful.
It may also be a more time- and cost-effective way to onboard employees in the
long term.
In Conclusion
Any L&D
program will offer to employees exactly what you as an L&D team put into
it. If you work hard to curate an onboarding program that focusses on people
and properly inducts new hires for a remote environment, you will see positive
outcomes for both the business as well as your employees.
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