Editorial
Juan and Krista were hired at the same time, into two different departments, a month ago. They’d promised to share their experiences with each other after the first 30 days.
As she hops onto their Teams meeting, Krista’s face looks radiant. “Hey Juan, great to see you again! How are things going for you, my friend?” she asks.
Juan doesn’t even attempt a smile. “Apparently, I’m not doing as well as you,” he says. “To be honest, I’ve been floundering. I beg for things to work on, but my boss keeps saying he’ll come up with connections and assign projects during our next 1:1. He’s canceled every one so far. I’ve been asking myself why they bothered to hire me.”
Krista widens her eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Juan. Not to make you feel worse, but my manager scheduled a bunch of meetings for me over my first two weeks and started me off with a couple of small low-key projects in my second week,” she replies. “He’s given me a lot of feedback in our 1:1s, and my team members have been amazing. I even have a team ‘buddy’ who’s shown me the ropes.”
Juan shakes his head with an audible sigh, and says, “It’s hard to believe we work for the same company. I have to say that I am kinda sorry I didn’t take that other offer when I could have.”
Onboarding in a world where all or some team members work remotely can be challenging, but it’s worth doing it right, unless you want to end up with someone like Juan here, who’s had such a miserable first month on the job that he’s likely to grab the first ticket out of there.
It’s Time for a Reset
Few companies I work with feel they’ve really nailed the onboarding process in the world of remote and hybrid work. What’s standing in the way?
- Inconsistent and unpredictable hybrid work schedules often mean that new hires commute in only to find that their managers or co-workers are working elsewhere.
- The belief or hope that a one-day new hire orientation session led by HR with links to employee handbooks and company policies are sufficient.
- Overwhelmed managers and colleagues can’t easily spare the time and attention required to bring new employees up to speed.
Creating a well-rounded new hire orientation program tailored for a remote/hybrid world is a complex undertaking compared to one where everyone is either remote or onsite. It may be time to reset your program.
First, decide which program goals are most important, from the lens of a new employee, before deciding on the details. Goals might include:
- Making employees feel glad they joined your organization.
- Connecting employees and their roles to the mission and purpose of the organization.
- Making new employees feel included; instilling a sense of belonging.
- Helping make connections with people who can provide support, information and guidance.
- Making employees aware of company policies, rules, norms, processes, resources, tools, etc.
- Providing opportunities for employees to produce work they’re proud of.
- Ensuring employees feel comfortable and confident knowing how and when to use various communication channels.
- Making it easy to access company resources, including training, HR, IT and more.
- Accelerating time to self-sufficiency, autonomy.
- Encouraging employees to refer their friends to the organization .
Your priority goals will help determine the timing, content and format of your onboarding program. Consider what goals you’d like to achieve by the end of the first day, first week, first month and first quarter. An onboarding program, when done well, should extend over several weeks, if not months.
Related Article: How to Onboard New Employees to Your Asynchronous Team
Elements to Include in an Onboarding Program
Depending on your priority goals, consider adding some of these elements to your program, in addition to the requisite onboarding sessions with HR and IT. Please note that some are geared especially, but not exclusively, for GenZ.
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Showcase who you are:
- Emphasize your company's mission, vision and commitment to social responsibility as part of the onboarding process. Highlight opportunities for new employees to make a meaningful impact and contribute to causes they care about.
- Familiarize your new employee to your organizational culture, beyond explaining the company values. Talk about how the values play out, using stories to illustrate. Encourage them to ask questions about how and why things are done a certain way. Make working hours and locations an important part of this discussion.
Keep it engaging:
- Take a “Digital-First Approach” for Gen Z new hires. Since they’re the first truly digital-native generation, they tend to appreciate digital platforms, mobile apps and interactive tools to deliver training materials, communicate information and facilitate virtual interactions.
- Break down onboarding information and materials into short, bite-sized formats. Create microlearning sessions to accommodate shorter attention spans and make the learning process more engaging and accessible. If reading is part of the onboarding process, avoid long, dense text, and instead use more headlines, bullets and visuals.
- Consider incorporating gamification elements, quizzes, simulations and interactive activities into the onboarding process to make learning more fun, immersive and memorable for Gen Z employees. Encourage competition with other new hires when appropriate.
Build connections wherever possible:
- Schedule a set of meetings for your new employee, along with the person’s name, role, relationship to the new employee and contact information. Spread these meetings over the first several weeks so your new employee isn’t overwhelmed. In your weekly 1:1s, ask your new employee for insights about each conversation.
- Assign an informal mentor or a “buddy.” Pair new hires with experienced team members who can offer guidance, answer questions, share unwritten rules and provide insights into company culture and the political landscape. Make sure the “buddy” is willing, if not eager, to play this role. Consider rewarding “buddies” with a public acknowledgement and/or some financial remuneration.
- Promote socialization. Facilitate virtual, hybrid or in-person meet-and-greet sessions, team-building activities and coffee chats to foster connections among remote and in-office employees. Organize virtual happy hours, lunch and learn sessions or themed Slack or Teams channels to promote camaraderie and help people feel more connected.
- Create networking and relationship-building events, including people from outside of your immediate organization. These may be in-person or virtual, or a combination. This might include having cross-functional groups brainstorm shared challenges or solutions for addressing real-life company issues, group training, all-hands meetings or social gatherings.
- Have all team members create a “fun facts to know and tell” page, especially important for a remote team. This might include personal information and professional info, such as former employers, special areas of expertise, communication preferences, typical work hours, etc.
Related Article: Orientation and Onboarding Both Matter in an Inclusive Workplace
Promote learning and growth:
- Encourage learning and growth opportunities, and suggest specific programs you think they’d especially benefit from, whether internal or external. Don’t make them wait to ask if it’s okay to take a certain program, especially if training guidelines are unclear or inconsistent across the organization.
- Assign small projects so new employees can use and retain what they’re learning as they go. This should be actual work that will benefit the team vs. “busy work” that no one values.
- Once the employee has ramped up, encourage them to shadow colleagues from different departments or levels of seniority to gain firsthand exposure to the company's organizational structure and political dynamics. This may be done in person, virtually or a combination.
Foster two-way communication:
- Provide frequent feedback, and don’t wait until your 1:1 meetings to do it. Implement a culture of continuous feedback where managers provide practical feedback, praise accomplishments, and acknowledge efforts in real-time. Consider adopting peer-to-peer recognition programs to foster camaraderie.
- Keep office hours open at least once a week for any team member to drop in, whether in person or virtually, for unstructured conversations that may be social, work-related or both. Encourage new employees to take part.
- Capitalize on your new employee’s fresh perspectives and help them gain confidence by asking for their opinions or past experiences, both in 1:1 and in team meetings. Be specific with your questions to make it easy for them to answer.
- Solicit input about your organization’s onboarding program from all new hires. Share results with HR, managers and senior leaders, and discuss the implications. Use this feedback to continuously refine and improve the onboarding process and ensure that new hires know that their ideas are valued.
Summary
In a remote/hybrid world, businesses must rethink their approach to onboarding, starting with their priority goals. Whether it's fostering a sense of belonging or accelerating time to autonomy, these goals will shape the timing, content and format of the onboarding.
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