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Over the last two years, the practice of working remotely has become more prevalent than it ever was. However, this was more of a compulsion and less of a choice for several organizations across the globe. The COVID situation forced professionals to stay at home and companies to set up virtual workspaces to undertake all their business processes. This has further enhanced the need for effective onboarding of employees. When you have new employees joining in while working from home, you need to be extra cautious about making them feel comfortable in the new work environment and gelling well with their colleagues. 

This changes the employee service approach significantly. The traditional employee onboarding processes are no longer relevant while welcoming employees working remotely. The lack of personal touch and presence of team members on-premise makes it difficult for an organization to undertake employee onboarding processes. 

However, the changing trend of remote working is slowly revamping the employee onboarding processes carried out by an organization. The new challenges have provided companies with new opportunities to leverage the onboarding processes and make the newest limitations. 

Before getting to the revamped onboarding processes, let us look at the importance of effective employee onboarding in general. 

Why Is Effective Employee Onboarding Important For Your Organization?

• Higher Employee Engagement
  
  The first few weeks are crucial for an employee after joining your organization. This is the time that determines their engagement with your company. If you successfully onboard your employees, they will genuinely drive towards working with you and feel motivated to log in to work every morning.
  
  
• Higher Employee Productivity
  
  Higher engagement leads to higher employee productivity. When your new employees are motivated enough to work with your organization, they will give their best in whatever they do, leading to increased productivity.
  
  
• Higher Employee Retention
  
  Poor onboarding can result in new employees leaving your company and switching jobs, primarily if they work remotely. One of the most critical factors affecting employee retention is holistic onboarding. If your employees are comfortable working with you and are getting along just fine with everyone in the company, they tend to stick around for long.
  
  
• Well-informed Employees
  
  The last thing you would want a new employee to be is clueless and lost when joining your company. Effective onboarding helps you provide all relevant information to your employees about their roles, responsibilities, and the company they are working for. This allows them to be equipped and prepared from day one.
  
  
• Promoting Inclusiveness
  
  When you onboard your employees well, it made them feel a part of your corporate family and included in the team. An attribute that often goes unnoticed, a genuinely warm welcome to the new employees, promotes a culture of inclusiveness within your organization that lasts for an extended period.
  
  
• Building Healthy Relations with Employees
  
  Onboarding processes often provide managers and team leaders to establish healthy relations with their new employees. It is their responsibility to train the employees well and provide them with all relevant information to work effectively.
  
  

Read More: How to onboard remote employees in 2021 for enhanced productivity

Revamped Onboarding Processes For Remote Employees

While effective onboarding is essential for an organization for several reasons, it is equally crucial for a company to adapt to the remote working environment to onboard its employees better. As working from home keeps gaining prominence, it becomes essential for organizations to adopt revamped onboarding processes that are suited for this new trend.

Here are some of the most relevant and effective onboarding processes that would help you welcome remote employees in the best way possible: 

• Auto-resolving Employee Issues
  
  It is natural for new employees to have doubts, queries, and confusion regarding their work and their tools for doing their work. Making your remote employees wait for an unreasonably long period to get their issues resolved is never a good idea. Implement modern employee service desks that allow your new employees to auto-resolve their issues with ease and efficiency. These service desks are equipped with AI functionality that understands the context of the issues raised by your employees and provides them with personalized solutions for the same.
  
  The modern service desks allow your employees to interact with dedicated AI chatbots that tend to them and provide them with tailored solutions just for them. This helps your remote employees to get their issues resolved by themselves without wasting their time.
  
  
• Onboarding Through Employee Service Desks
  
  When you combine seamless employee support with organized onboarding processes, your remote employees would have no difficulty adjusting to the new work environment. Modern employee service desks allow companies to onboard their remote employees through seamless process automation and personalized employee support.
  
  Employees working remotely are very likely to work on online collaborative platforms (Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack, Zoom, etc.) to interact with their team members and perform their tasks in a virtual workspace. A modern service desk can be integrated with these collaborative platforms to provide a holistic onboarding experience to your employees.
  
  These service desks allow you to send automated emails to your employees on their first day at your company. These emails can contain a personalized welcome letter, details about their roles and responsibilities, contact details about their team members, their login credentials for the software used for working, and all other details important for your employees to start working.
  
  This helps you ensure that your remote working employees can access all information to start their journey with your organization effectively.
  
  
• Interactive Microlearning
  
  If you are willing to train your new employees in specific micro-skills, you can facilitate extensive microlearning while onboarding them. The modern employee service desks help you feed training resources into your knowledge base, allowing your employees to train themselves effectively.
  
  You can provide your employees with training materials in the form of texts, images, videos, animations, and other interactive content formats. The use of interactive content for training new employees increases their retention capacity and allows them to get trained without having to depend on dedicated trainers.
  
  Also, microlearning helps you in cutting down training expenses as you can get your remote employees trained by implementing a single unified platform.
  
  
• Having A Revamped Onboarding Plan In Place
  
  Never make the mistake of using the existing onboarding plan and strategies for onboarding remote employees. Always have a revamped onboarding plan to go ahead with remote onboarding. Borrow essential elements from your existing on-premise plan and start from scratch.
  
  Clearly define the objectives you are willing to achieve and the route you plan to get your remote employees on board. Set specific milestones at different stages to measure your plan's effectiveness and gauge your employees' response.
  
  
• Onboarding Remote Employees In Groups
  
  When onboarding remote employees, it is always advisable to onboard them in groups instead of conducting the same procedure for every employee. This makes things easier for both employees and the management. Remote employees are already working in a physically secluded environment.
  
  Onboarding them in groups allows them to interact with their peers and bond with them while working from home. Ultimately, this makes the entire onboarding process less intimidating and more interactive in nature.
  
  
• Organizing Off-site Meetups
  
  Not all remote employee onboarding processes need to be virtual. You can always organize off-site meetups and gatherings for all your remote employees during their initial days at work.
  
  No matter how effective your remote onboarding processes are, there will always be a lack of personal touch when working remotely. These meetups would help you bring your team members together and help them know each other better. Also, it is a great team-building exercise that makes your remote employees feel included in your work family.
  
  
• Checking In On Your Employees Regularly
  
  In onboarding remote employees, the management needs to check in on the new employees regularly. As physical supervision is not possible, regular checking helps you assess the progress made by the employees and the overall effectiveness of your onboarding campaign.
  
  Use the milestones you set during the planning stage to make holistic assessments while checking on your new employees. This would help you obtain first-hand feedback for your revamped onboarding processes, allowing you to make necessary changes to improve the same.
  
  Moreover, when you check in on your new employees regularly, you can understand the issues faced by them, analyse the same, and help them resolve the same to ensure a smooth working experience.
  
  

The Final Word

This is how the increasing trend of remote working has led to a revamp in employee onboarding processes. It is advisable for organizations operating in all industries to make relevant changes in their onboarding approach to see a rise in employee engagement, productivity, and retention.