The remote work environment is unique in its challenges and advantages. The biggest part of this - which many companies don’t know about - is the aspect of onboarding new remote employees.

Onboarding creates a typical case of “first impression matters” as many employees tend to make a personal decision about how long they are willing to work in a company based on how well they are treated, and how easy or difficult the onboarding process goes.

In addition to this, companies that get their onboarding process right will likely encourage employee participation and commitment, which promotes productivity.

Getting a smooth onboarding can be tricky especially for remote companies since people have different personality types, learning styles, and expectations, and they display varying learning curves and technology usage and acceptance.

Which all comes together to influence the success of both pre-boarding and onboarding processes. This article, therefore, sets out to provide solutions for the above situation.

Challenges of Onboarding Remote Employees

Here, we discuss some of these challenges of onboarding remote employees.

Limited Social Interaction

If you want to classify people based on their preferred method of communication, you might get three categories: heavy texters, phone callers, and video chatters. Each of these groups of people may not do well in an environment that doesn’t offer their preferred method of communication.

For instance, a remote employee who is a natural video caller will find it easier to jump on an onboarding video meeting than to have an HR manager communicate the onboarding process through text chats.

Similarly, a heavy texter remote employee might learn faster and interact better if the onboarding process is laid out in a chat rather than through voice or video calls.

Another major cause of limited social interaction during employee onboarding occurs when many different communication options are used, especially if they are all jumbled up within a short time frame, as this may be overwhelming for the employee.

Reliance on Individual Learning

Some people learn on their own, and find their way around without any assistance while other people require varying degrees of support and direction.

Be that as it may, requiring assistance with learning, expressing an undesirable learning curve, or having technology acceptance problems does not directly imply that an employee will perform less than expected. Sometimes, all it takes is for them to learn the ropes before they unleash an impressive performance and work ethic.

Companies need to take note of this because, in certain situations, you would find companies implementing a self-onboarding and training process where new remote employees are given instructions (whether through scripts or pre-recorded audios and videos) to follow and then left all alone.

With no way of contacting the company for questions or inquiries.

Even though promoters of this idea believe that the supplied instructions are accurate, have proven to be helpful, and give them insights into employee attentiveness and adaptability skills.

It is still advisable to provide some form of assistance in order to quicken onboarding and training processes, to avoid high costs related to repeating training, and to avoid dismissing sound and promising employees due to failed onboarding.

Technical Difficulties

Technical difficulties are a major challenge in the remote work environment. It is even more of a problem when you have someone from a traditional, non-IT space or someone new to a particular company technology or software, join the onboarding or training process.

Technical difficulties arise for many reasons. First of these is the incomprehension of setup instructions by the employee.

Truth be told - it is sometimes difficult to follow do-it-yourself (DIY) installation steps, especially for pc applications, and the same extends to employees trying to set up or use a completely strange remote work software.

The necessary steps for installing or using a product could differ from what is in an onboarding instruction based on the employee’s Windows OS version (Windows 11, 10, and the likes), CPU processor architecture (32-bits or 64-bits), or on the availability of any specific hardware accessory (such as a headphone).

In addition to this, remote employees might encounter challenges if their work device lacks the hardware capacity to run the required onboarding or training software.

How to Onboard Remote Employees: Best Practices for Success

Develop a Pre-boarding Program

First things first, you want to have a well-laid-out plan for onboarding remote employees. You need this to checkmate any hiccups in the process and to get good documentation, which further helps to improve employee experience and company performance in similar future operations.

But before the actual thing, you should make sure that you have a pre-boarding program in place.

Pre-boarding and on-boarding may seem to be the same, however, they aren’t. You can think of it this way. Pre-boarding - in an air travel scenario - involves all the things you do before getting on an airplane.

This includes going through security checks, taking your luggage to the loading area, and getting your ticket and ID readily available for processing.

Once you pass the pre-boarding activities and step inside the plane, you automatically begin onboarding which will involve finding your designated seat, putting hand luggage in the overhead compartment, and buckling your seat belt before the flight begins.

A pre-boarding program for new remote employees should include issuing personalized welcome messages, issuing company policy and guidelines, sharing profiles of co-workers, and sending over helpful company packages such as laptops, software, etc.

All in all, this will help to reduce employee anxiety towards the workplace by keeping them aware of their starting schedule and giving them a good idea of what working in the company feels like. And for the company itself, an onboarding program allows smooth integration of the new employees’ activities into existing programs.

Assign an Onboarding Buddy

We’ve explained one of the challenges of onboarding remote employees is the lack of proper guidance and direction. Seeing this, businesses can move to assign an onboarding buddy to each of their new remote employees. You can think of this individual as a customer service representative.

Since their work will be to reach out to an employee after they have been hired, communicate with them about the next steps to take, bring them up to date with current happens in the company, help them make decisions and better understand processes, answer their questions and all of that.

The onboarding buddy should project the feeling of a personal trainer. To do this, they will need to express empathy through patience, tolerance, and understanding towards the employee. Also, they will need to be in good communication and use their knowledge and expertise in making sound judgments.

Set Realistic Goals and Expectations  

Setting realistic goals and expectations means being knowledgeable enough to know that remote employees cannot possibly get on with their roles within a day or even a week of joining the team - and applying this accordingly.

Many companies are guilty when it comes to milking new employees dry of output through short deadlines, prolonged work hours, and multiple tasks.

Of course, doing this might lead to the realisation of a company’s goals, nevertheless, the strategy creates undue pressure and strain on employees which could lead to a breakdown, forcing them to leave or fall below in their performance.

Provide Flexible Training Options

The unavailability of text, call, and video options for onboarding or training new remote employees can trigger limited social interactions from them. Secondly, a situation where all three communication methods are available but the employees are not allowed to choose their preferred option will likely stifle interactions.

Limited interactions like this are something you don’t want happening in your company.

Because, unlike the traditional work environment where it is easy to notice that an employee is not participating (whether through their body language as they sit, walk or talk, through the total number of responses they offer in one or more meetings, or through their presence or absence at any point in time), it is a little more difficult to figure out this in a remote work setting.

The best a remote company can do is to nurture participation from day one rather than trying to resolve the issue after an employee has gone cold.

You will get this right when you offer new remote employees the opportunity to point out their preferences, and when you make an effort to be flexible and accommodate such opinions as much as possible.

Benefits of Properly Onboarding Remote Employees

Properly onboarding remote employees has employee-side and company-side benefits, let’s explore each side.

Creates Positive Work Experience for Employees  

By properly onboarding remote employees, you reduce the heightening pressure and anxiety related to joining a new team, therefore, creating a positive work experience for the employee.

Gives Confidence Boost

Starting out in a warm and welcoming environment (through proper onboarding) will help new employees build confidence in no time. You will often find them engaging, offering whatever suggestions or ideas they have, and leading in one capacity or the other.

Promotes Employee Retention

Aside from the fact that first impression matters (in employee retention too), and an onboarding process is where a new remote employee gets their first impression of a company, employees will always stay longer in a company where they have an overall positive work experience.

Helps the Company Evaluation of Remote Employees and Future Performance

If an onboarding program turns out to be effective, a company can adopt it and apply it to all of its future hires. Similarly, it can reject or modify failed onboarding processes.

This evaluation and modification or acceptance help to significantly improve a company’s performance when it comes to onboarding new remote employees. A well-furnished process will add to the positive impression that new employees get of a company.

Conclusion

Onboarding remote employees no doubt has its own unique challenges, especially since it can influence how an employee perceives the work environment, how well they function in it, and how long they are willing to stay in a company.

I have discussed four ways in which companies can conduct successful onboarding for remote working. As I pointed out, both the employee and the company stand to benefit from successful remote onboarding.

On the employee side, they get to settle in quickly and become productive in no time, and the company can reduce employee turnover and build a reliable workforce.

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