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Remote onboarding brings its own, particular challenges: how do you build connections over a screen, avoid zoom fatigue and make sure knowledge transfer is happening effectively?
While having the option of bringing employees into the office a few days might solve these issues, that raises a whole new set of questions. How much time should an employee spend in the office in their first week? What’s better off being done remotely? And how do we keep the process consistent for everyone when teams often have varied schedules?
Organizations settling into their hybrid realities now have to build onboarding programs that account for these intricacies, while accomplishing the same goals.
Finding the Balance in Orientation
TechSmith implemented a “flex 20” approach, which means employees are required to spend 20% of their time in the office weekly, with broad discretion given to individual teams to decide how and when that happens.
So how does this model play out during employee onboarding? According to TechSmith's VP of HR, Amy Casciotti, it has to do a lot with team schedules, and who might be in the office in an employee’s first week.
“We love it when we have a group of people starting and they can come into the office and start the orientation process together,” Casciotti said. “But if the trade-off is between that and not meeting their team, we'd rather they come in when they're going to meet the whole team that they're going to be working with.”
Because the company leaves it up to individual teams to determine when their new employees connect with the rest of the team, the broader company has begun to focus more on what should be done synchronously vs. asynchronously.
“As far as our orientation, we've had to do a lot of trial and error of figuring out what things do we really need to happen live — and that doesn't necessarily mean in person,” she said. After getting feedback that too much onboarding was happening asynchronously, the company pushed back the other way, but then found that new hires were spending too much time on Zoom.
Casciotti said that today, it’s about finding a balance, but she did note that certain aspects of onboarding happen best in person.
“I think anything that's about trying to get people to connect and start to feel comfortable with each other, I would prefer those to be in person,” she said. “Zoom is still better than not having it at all, but I would prefer to be in person. But if it's just conveying information that they might need to refer back to later — because again, so much is getting thrown at them — not all of that needs to be done in person.”
Related Article: How to Build a Virtual Onboarding Program for Remote Workers
Onboarding Is a Time for Team Building
There are some obvious aspects to onboarding: introducing employees to new processes, colleagues and technologies, and ramping up their workload. But Craig Durr, chief analyst and founder at Collab Collective, believes that understanding and bridging the differences between how colleagues work also matters in a hybrid environment.
“One of the biggest challenges is trying to blend how I might work from home with how my other colleagues work elsewhere and finding those synergies,” Durr said. “You can throw technology at it, but sometimes the technology doesn't bridge the gap.”
During the onboarding process, teams need to build trust, and can do so in large part by understanding each others’ working preferences and personality. Although most personality tests happen during the hiring process, Durr said there’s a case for running them during the onboarding period.
“Therefore, as a manager, you know how to work with them,” he said. “You know who to pair them up with. And you can also, in a safe environment, share that information, so co-workers know how to work with each other as well.”
It all comes down to creating more personalized, intentional onboarding experiences, Durr said. “I think one of those mistakes that people have made going into hybrid work is trying to use a single playbook across all their company or all their locations.”
Related Article: Digital Onboarding Is About More Than Just Technology
Taking Extra Care of Hybrid Newbies
In some cases, an employee joining a hybrid-based company may be coming from an environment that was either fully remote or fully in-person. Taking the time to understand individual differences is even more important here, said Durr.
“Not everyone's going to be the same type of worker coming in,” he said. “So I think there's an element of acceptance of how people are, and then giving them an environment and then maybe tools so that they can be successful.”
At Techsmith, Casciotti said, they spend extra time making sure new hires understand the multiple channels for communication they may have to use throughout the day, depending on where they are, as well as any other technologies or platforms not intuitive to an in-person employee.
In addition, because they have found that employees are less likely to raise questions when working remotely, the company designates a “buddy” or mentor to help bridge the gap between remote and in-person working worlds and create a sense of psychological safety.
“When they have questions, whether they're here in the office or remote, they kind of have that free pass to ask away,” Casciotti explained.
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Casciotti noted how high-stakes the first few weeks of an employee’s tenure can be, which underscores the importance of building connections from the get-go.
“If you've been here for a week or two and you've not really met anyone and you don't really feel like you're becoming a part of the company. Your job search is still pretty open because you just started here,” Casciotti said. “So if a new offer comes up and you're not really feeling like you're clicking, you might consider it.”
