First impressions are important, especially when you start a new job or accept a new employee to your team. After all, you only get one chance, and if you try to fix how you presented yourself the first time, it might be too late. And it becomes even more complicated if the entire team is working remotely.
More to it, an employer needs to make a good first impression to build mutual trust between the company and its new employees. Many people may be excited about a new job, but they are often also nervous about it.
Therefore, to make the onboarding process smoother, you need to be prepared for it upfront. In other words, you need a plan and a strategy. Thus today, we will share some tips for making online onboarding effective.
Tip #1: Use an Effective Group Communication Tool
First of all, to apply any of the tips that will be listed further in this article, you will need an effective group communication tool. Only by selecting a reliable tool will you be able to ensure smooth communication between your team members and new employees.
Slack is a solid choice to empower every team’s manager. The platform has integration with effective automation tools that will help supervisors save time and avoid repetitive onboarding messages by writing and scheduling them upfront.
Moreover, a company can create a Slack channel dedicated to recruiting new employees. Such a channel allows discussions among HR, the recruitment department, and managers to determine the best potential candidates. After all, a manager’s input is necessary because they have to work with new hires.
Tip #2: Have a Proper Plan
Having prior experience with onboarding in person should help you with creating a better process online. It is no secret that some companies fall short with their onboarding instead of making the most out of it.
In case you have a setup for onboarding, analyze what is missing to make it effective remotely. Perhaps the person conducting interviews is not prepared enough? Or maybe you fail to ask potential candidates relevant questions or involve them to participate?
If efficiency is one of your onboarding goals, eliminate irrelevant chatter, and focus on what is important.
Company culture and values should be priorities when you work on developing an onboarding strategy. Give new hires something to be happy about. Inspire them and make them understand what the company is about and how they can contribute to a thriving business.
Tip #3: Continue Communicating
You should contact the new employees on the first day to make a good impression of yourself and on behalf of the workplace. Then, explain to them the responsibilities and who they should contact in case new hires have any questions.
It is important to keep communicating with your newbies because it is easy to start feeling like an outcast, particularly when working remotely and having no person-to-person contact with colleagues. You can keep in touch on a communication platform like Slack since you can send and receive messages instantly.
If your new employees start feeling rejected, it may cause them to feel too stressed out and overwhelmed, which is not a good sign for one’s productivity. Therefore, make sure your newbies feel welcome at work.
Tip #4: Ensure Newcomers Are Fully Equipped
Getting your equipment, such as hardware and software, is quite inefficient when joining a company and visiting tech people and managers because the process takes a while and involves multiple employees, distracting them from work.
Meanwhile, taking care of business digitally means that you can join a relevant group channel on a communication tool or receive an email with the necessary information, including where to download software and its guidelines and where to get login details for cloud servers and other relevant company platforms.
Tip #5: Provide Online Training
As the training takes place online, you can automate the process by preparing it upfront and using the same online training material for all of your new employees. This way, the company saves time and money because there is no need to train each employee separately.
Another advantage of online training is that it provides the same length and quality of training for all new employees. Therefore, the quality of training isn’t affected by how busy you are on that day.
Tip #6: Keep the Engagement Up
It is not that easy to keep a high rate of engagement during online onboarding. You should encourage breaks every hour or so to give the listeners opportunities to relax. After all, staring at a screen non-stop is not healthy, nor is it easy to maintain one’s attention all the time.
You can also switch speakers to keep things interesting if the onboarding process is long. Also, give chances for potential candidates to contribute. Invite them to add to the discussion by asking questions or providing answers.
Finally, make sure that there are as few technical difficulties as possible. Crashing, freezing, or poor audio quality cause frustration, and it is difficult to keep someone engaged when they become fed up with technical issues.
Conclusion On Online Onboarding
These are the 6 effective online onboarding tips which you would need to follow in order to make the onboarding process smoother. If you want to know more strategies to make online onboarding effective, kindly comment us below and we will be ready with more tips soon.
