It's 2020 and you seem to be hiring new people as your business is running and growing by the day. Well, let us tell you two things: 1) Congratulations! Many sectors have been hit hard by the current pandemic but you have made the leap and can continue to expand. That deserves some champagne and a huge amount of confetti! 2)Nevertheless, you must now take it easy and keep your disco shoes in the closet for the time being. COVID-19 is still telling us not to go out. Continue to celebrate from home, hold your meetings remotely and organize the onboarding of new employees from home.
So how can you welcome your new employees efficiently if you can't do it face-to-face? Well, you definitely shouldn't spend weeks preparing 4-hour online sessions every day.
With this blog post, we want to show you new ways to manage onboarding from home and achieve the balance between autonomy for your new team members and support from others.
Assuming that the pre-onboarding process (such as having all work tools and system access ready) is covered, you can also consider these next five tips for your new employees' first days.
Interactive company compass
We know it's not easy to summarize everything that makes your company tick. At ahead, we define the company compass as a collection of your brand's vision, values and the goals you want to achieve.
But how can you best communicate the pillars of your company to your new employees? Be careful, not everyone has a golden memory and the likelihood is that new employees will forget them if they only hear it once at the "welcome meeting".
We recommend that you store all this valuable information in a tool that your employees can access anytime, anywhere. Empower and encourage your employees instead of boring them!
What does your way of working look like?
Once your new team members have been introduced to the Company Compass, it's time to introduce them to the way you work. This could be information on how your business departments or divisions are distributed, how they work together, how you implement your technology or simply who your employees need to contact for that particular question. This is all about practical information and again, you should not share this in a "welcome meeting", just briefly introduce it.
Gather all this information and encourage your employees to look into it in depth themselves. In this way, you will avoid wasting time and your new employees will see that you have the necessary trust in them.
Balance between giving space and checking in
Quick reminder: Don't replace "welcome meetings" with a "you'll find everything you need here, I'm off" attitude. Don't do that! The key is to find the most efficient way to onboard your new team members from home.
Make sure you give them enough time to navigate their way through your onboarding plan so they can feel their autonomy from day one. But as mentioned earlier, this is still an onboarding process. So make sure you regularly check in and ask how well the new crew members are doing and how you can help and support them to feel comfortable.
One-to-one
The best way to introduce your new employees to the colleagues they will be working hand in hand with is through one-to-one meetings. Large team meetings are great, but in terms of efficiency, they don't perform as well as a one-to-one. Firstly , because the interaction in a virtual team meeting is not as fluid and easy as in real life, and secondly, it is very likely that your new team members will not have all the names, roles and information they would need to follow the meeting.
Make sure that new employees have face-to-face meetings with key people so that they can discuss their future collaboration in a relaxed and private atmosphere. This is also the ideal opportunity for them to get to know each other better and develop a common bond.
Present the whole crew
It depends on the size of your company, of course, but have you ever been introduced to a group of people who you didn't know who was who by the end of the presentation?
Although we've probably all been in this situation before, we still recommend conducting such a team presentation. However, it should really only be a brief introduction of each person.
The advantage of remote onboarding is that the process of meeting the whole crew can be gradual. Internal social interaction within your organization will help your new team members meet and connect with everyone and will lead to conversations and employee engagement within your social platforms.
You have done an excellent job in your recruitment process, so continue to offer this quality. A fun and well-organized onboarding process will be your new hire's final impression of your company. Conducting it from home shouldn't be a problem! Simply different.
ahead is a social intranet that helps companies store all their valuable information in one place so that all employees can stay connected through our social features.
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