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The trend of working remotely has seen a huge spike in the last two years. Thanks to the Covid-19 situation, organizations have operated virtually, and professionals across industries have been working remotely since 2020. However, the practice of working from home is not that young. 

Owing to their dynamic needs, employees in several organizations worldwide have been working remotely for many years. This is mainly because of the comfort and flexibility offered by working from one's home. According to CoSo Cloud, 77% of remote employees claim that they are more productive when they work from home. 

This makes it very clear that the trend of working remotely is here to stay. However, despite all the comfort and freedom, managing remote employees is not free from challenges. When an organization is no longer in touch with its employees physically, it often becomes difficult for the management to handle business processes and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Also, employees often find it difficult to stay connected with their teams and collaborate with their peers effectively. 

One of the major challenges faced by an organization while working remotely is handling the employee onboarding process. When the new employees are hired and brought onboard without physical contact with their teams, it gets difficult for HR employees to ensure that the employee onboarding process goes well. 

This has led organizations to optimize online collaborative platforms and use them to stay in touch with their employees. As the trend of remote working gets more prominent, so does the use of platforms like Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and other platforms that help organizations build a virtual workspace for their remote employees. 

This is the key reason why software giants across the globe are investing a fortune in collaborative platforms. For instance, Salesforce bought Slack in 2020 for $27.7 billion to ride the wave of virtual workspaces and optimize remote working practices.

When it gets difficult to manage remote processes, the ideal way to onboard remote employees in 2021 is to Teamsify the onboarding process with the help of a modern service desk. 

What Do You Mean By Teamsification Of Onboarding Processes?

Teamsification is the process of combining a range of processes dedicated to providing streamlined support to employees and providing the same to your employees via Microsoft Teams. 

As of April 2021, the active user base of Microsoft Teams stood at 145 million. With the credibility of Microsoft and a range of collaborative features, Microsoft Teams has carved its niche as a virtual workspace and has been helping professionals around the world to work remotely. 

In simple words, Teamsifying your onboarding process is the process of onboarding your employee using Microsoft Teams. Organizations can use the collaborative platform to welcome new employees and make sure that they are comfortable with the new work environment. 

A teamsified onboarding process for your remote employees involves providing your employees with a range of support processes on a single collaborative platform. Instead of the new employees having to look for suitable assistance on different platforms, Teamsification allows them to get all their issues resolved on Microsoft Teams. 

Before discussing the processes involved in Teamsifying your remote employee onboarding activities, let us understand some of the significant challenges encountered by HR managers while onboarding remote employees. 

Major Challenges Encountered By HR Managers While Onboarding Remote Employees

• Lack Of Personal Touch
  
  This is the biggest challenge an HR manager would face while onboarding remote employees. When employees start working in an organization without physically meeting their managers and team members, it is often difficult for them to build a rapport with their company.
  
  
• Issues With Communication And Collaboration
  
  Naturally, it is easier for employees to communicate and collaborate while working on-premise than working remotely. The employee onboarding process becomes challenging when remote employees cannot interact with their team members effectively, thereby affecting their engagement with the organization.
  
  
• Lack Of Consistency
  
  HR managers often have a hard time ensuring that everyone is on the same page and the new employees are in sync with the steady workflow during their first few weeks. Lack of physical monitoring and collaboration often results in the new employees facing difficulties adjusting to the pace of business processes. This often results in a lack of employee engagement as the new employees feel lost and confused after joining the organization.
  
  
• Lack Of Team-building
  
  This issue arises due to inadequate communication and collaboration within the organization. When new remote employees cannot interact well with their managers and team members, it prevents the development of healthy relationships within and across teams. A lack of team-building often leads to reduced engagement and productivity within an organization.
  
  
• Inadequate Employee Support
  
  New employees are often full of doubts and confusion regarding their tasks and how the organization operates. Lack of efficient onboarding would render the new employees helpless without a streamlined support system in place.
  
  Without personalized support to guide them through their initial weeks, the new employees would find it difficult to adjust to the organization's work culture and fully understand their roles.
  
  

Teamsifying Your Remote Employee Onboarding Process

In order to provide seamless support to employees through Teamsification, organizations integrate Microsoft Teams with a modern service desk. This allows companies to optimize knowledge management and provide personalized support to their employees. 

Here are some of the major processes that allow you to Teamsify your remote employee onboarding process: 

1. Personalized Emails For Streamlined Onboarding
   
   When onboarding remote employees, there is no scope for providing employees with the "joining goodies" and other necessary resources at their desks. Instead, you can Teamsify your remote employee onboarding process by creating personalized emails for all your new employees based on their user persona and sending them to your employees via Microsoft Teams.
   
   These emails can be sent to remote employees on their first day at work. HR managers can send a customized welcome letter, company policies, login/email credentials, contact details of their team members, and other relevant details that help them get equipped for their new jobs.
   
   
2. Conversational AI and Chatbots
   
   A modern service desk helps you provide seamless support to your newly onboarded employees through conversational AI. This technology allows your employees to chat with virtual assistants within Microsoft Teams if they have any confusion, issue, or question. These AI chatbots interact with your employees like humans, understand the raised issues, and provide them with personalized solutions.
   
   This helps you save your new employees from waiting for solutions by delegating the first level of support to the chatbots. As the employees' chat with these virtual assistants without leaving the collaborative platform they are working on, they scan your enterprise knowledge base and come up with solutions tailored specifically for the employee in question.
   
   Read More: What are the benefits of an IT helpdesk chatbot?
   
   
3. Auto-resolving Issues Via Automated Ticketing System
   
   Likely, your new employees are not well-versed with the manual ticketing system, especially if they are responsible for performing non-technical tasks. This may affect their first impression of your organization and cause inconvenience in getting their issues resolved.
   
   Teamsifying your employee onboarding process allows you to provide your employees with an automated ticketing system within Microsoft Teams. This relieves your employees from the effort of creating, tracking, and closing support tickets. All you need to do is initiate a chat with the chatbots and automate the entire ticketing process.
   
   If your new employees are not satisfied with the first level of support provided by the AI chatbots and need further insights, they can get their cases routed to a support agent. This would make the service desk raise a support ticket and send essential details about the employee and the case to a suitable agent.
   
   The service desk would send automated and real-time updates to your employees while the agents handle their cases. Once the case is resolved and the employee has all the answers, the platform automatically closes the ticket and the case in progress.
   
   
4. Getting New Employees Trained
   
   Apart from providing quick and customized solutions to their issues, Teamsification of your onboarding processes helps you get your remote employees trained by themselves using Microsoft Teams. Suppose you need the new employees to excel in specific skills to improve their productivity. In that case, you can add all necessary training resources to your knowledge base and have the employees access the same from anywhere and anytime.
   
   This helps them learn new skills and polish the ones that they already possess at their own pace. Once the new employees become self-reliant by training themselves, it leverages their productivity, thereby making your remote onboarding process a success.
   
   
5. Communicating Work Policies
   
   Your new employees need to be well-versed with the work and HR policies as they come on board. Teamsifying your remote onboarding processes helps your employees ask all questions relevant to the work policies and obtain the utmost clarity about using a single unified platform.
   
   

The Final Word 

These were some of the significant ways to Teamsify your employee onboarding process to provide a wholesome experience to your remote employees through the platform of Microsoft Teams. Providing new employees with the right mix of support services helps them get comfortable with your organization and stay engaged with your company for a more extended time.