How to Onboard Employees in New Positions From Anywhere

In today’s globalized world, remote working became a lifestyle while several years ago it sounded like something new and unusual. According to a survey by Statista, at the beginning of 2020, about 16% of respondents are full-time remote workers while 16% work very often from home. Moreover, if we make a retrospective of the 2020 year, we can see that COVID-19 has forced more people to work on a remote basis. That is why it is important to every modern business to have an onboarding system for remote employees. It requires not only a process of adaptation to work from anywhere policy, but also requires appropriate technical basis, like virtual office or software for effective communication. Now, we will discuss how to onboard employees in new work from anywhere in a more detailed way.

How to onboard employees in new work from anywhere

When onboarding a new employee who will work from anywhere, you need to create an onboarding strategy that will help employees adjust very quickly to all processes within the work environment, learn about the corporate culture and different tools they should be using. This will give your company the possibility to hire employees from all over the world as well as quickly open new offices. So, let’s take a look at six main steps that help you build a remote work process.

Build a work from anywhere policy 

Work from anywhere policy is a set of frequently asked questions alongside basic rules which can help your staff understand your expectations from remote work. Some people have never had an experience of working from anywhere, that is why it is important to create a remote policy, where you will explain what you expect from them. For example, in particular companies, remote work means only work from home while other companies allow working in coffee-shops or co-working spaces. Also, you have to state some technical requirements, make guidelines concerning new software and workspace requirements. In addition, you should outline security guidelines to prevent security breaches. This set of instructions will make it easier for every employee to understand the required behavior during work from anywhere.

Move to a virtual office

Remote work means that you have to organize a process of communication between employees. It means the usage of video calls and screen sharing during meetings. It is up to you to decide whether it will be an all-in-one virtual office or you will choose several different software. Virtual offices can give your new employees unexpected advantages: they can better manage their workload by distributing their tasks throughout the day and not spending too much time on a single task.  This will keep your employees productive and motivated. With that in mind, a virtual office gives your company a chance to maintain a professional corporate environment while providing employees with more flexible management of their workloads.

Provide online training for employees 

When you implement a work from anywhere policy, your employees probably will have some questions. That is why you will need to have an online learning management system in place. Not only does it help you quickly update online training materials to reflect company policy, culture, and compliances, but it also allows you to get advanced reports and analytics on the employee onboarding process. Also, you can create a course for both new and experienced employees. One of the most efficient advantages of an online learning management system is that everyone can learn information at their own pace.

Keep everyone in the loop with check-ins scheduled

One of the most important aspects of working from anywhere is to keep everyone informed. During the work in the traditional office, there is no problem to gather all employees on daily meetings and share some updates. Remote work requires some adjustments to this approach. To manage this issue, you probably should organize some check-ins. It is critical to make these check-ins scheduled and regular. It will give you the opportunity to share any new information or discuss important company updates. For better organization of these calls, you have to use some centralized remote platform with a wide amount of functions, such as audio and video calls, ability to schedule events, and task management. This approach can make it easier for you to manage some tasks directly during a scheduled check-in. Also this software will boost the communication in your team, because everyone invited will receive the notification, and a link to join the call quickly.

Improve team communication using online team collaboration software

Communication is an important aspect of your work from anywhere. You should provide your team with communication tools or use virtual office software to keep everyone on the same page. Not only does it help team members to share ideas and discuss problems, but they can also come up with solutions. With the right collaboration and communication tools, your employees have everything to work productively. Moreover, they spend less time searching for things and more time performing tasks. This helps you drive a more collaborative work environment that strengthens engagement and builds strong connections between teammates.

Monitor employee performance and ask for feedback

Another important issue of working from anywhere is tracking employee performance. To manage this aspect, you should organize regular meetings or develop some key performance indexes. It will let you know how productive your team is. Moreover, you should ask them for feedback. It will let you improve their performance and working conditions. Your company can make retrospective and analyze what innovation went well and what aspects you can improve next time. Feedback is vital in the development of any company as it helps you maintain the vector of development. For example, you can use some tools to automate feedback and their analysis. With a short questionnaire you will receive full understanding of what areas can be improved and what aspects of work are good. 

Final thoughts

To summarize, working from anywhere is getting more and more popular, and technological development opens up an opportunity to onboard employees virtually. To effectively onboard your new employees during remote work, you have to develop a system. First of all, you should create a work from anywhere policy. It can make your expectations clear for your employees. Also, it will help to answer some frequently asked questions. It’s no secret that remote work requires some software that will support communication between teammates as well as provide additional functions, such as task distribution and file sharing. Another important aspect of work from anywhere is learning. The online learning management system can significantly boost the process of onboarding for your employees because it provides the opportunity to maintain a personalized learning program for everyone. After you successfully develop this system and maintain communication among your team, try to collect feedback. It will demonstrate how you can improve your remote work process.
DDI Development company brings a unique combination of e-business experience and solid technical proficiency to provide high-quality web and mobile digital solutions in a friendly and creative way. We help businesses achieve their goals by offering professional services. Our expertise spans into several industries including e-commerce, CRMs, e-learning platforms, recruitment and financial systems, etc. Our experienced team has delivered 150+ completed projects.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.