In the post-pandemic world, the working model has undergone a tectonic shift. Remote employees are no longer an exception but an integral part of the workforce. And this shift is here to stay. A Gartner survey reveals that 74% of organisations plan to permanently shift to more remote work post-COVID-19.
To accommodate this growing trend of remote workers, organisations need to revisit and rework their employee policies. One policy that you definitely cannot ignore is employee onboarding, which becomes all the more important in the remote setup.
An effective employee onboarding process is a first strategic step that helps new hires feel connected to the organisation’s philosophies, culture and goals. In fact, successful onboarding increases the likelihood that new employees will stick around. Research reveals that organisations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
Starting on the right foot becomes even more important (also trickier) when the employees are working in remote teams. How do you build loyalty and engagement in the new hires? How do you help them integrate into the teams? How do you ensure they are receiving the right training and guidance to become productive?
We look at 5 focus areas to streamline the remote employee onboarding experience
1. Improving the new hire experience:
Ensure that proper onboarding processes are in place for approval, submitting documents, training and other administrative work. Extensive paperwork and multiple emails not only lead to delays but also negatively impact employee satisfaction and retention rates. Hence, the faster they fill out the paperwork, the better. An effective and efficient process for forms, agreements, etc, is the first crucial step that will create a positive employee experience. Transparency and end-to-end visibility in the onboarding processes help remote employees quickly get past the joining formalities without delays and errors, and move to the next stage. This is crucial to prevent remote employees from feeling disconnected and help them become productive quickly.
2. Getting the employees acquainted with their tasks:
Even the most experienced employees need clarity on what exactly is expected from them. They need visibility on the tasks and responsibilities, who they will be reporting to and who will review their work. The clarity in terms of deliverables, roles and responsibilities helps new hires to understand what they need to do and how. In the case of remote hires, this becomes even more important. The sooner they get clarity on jobs and start delivering, the better are their chances to feel connected with the team. This eventually plays a big role in ensuring employees are there for the long haul.
3. Focusing on role-specific training:
New recruits who are still getting a sense of their job role, need more guidance from their manager and team before they come up to speed. A remote environment lacks the advantage of walking up to the person to clarify any doubts or queries. Calling/pinging someone they haven’t met is not that easy. Providing role-based training is an effective solution to this issue. Connecting the new hire with anyone they would be working or connecting with on a day-to-day basis and a video session on how and what to do to complete a particular task goes a long way in helping them in feeling in control of their tasks.
4. Facilitating collaboration:
Providing remote new hires with tools and technology to effectively collaborate within the teams as well as departments, plays a big role in their efficiency and productivity. Enabling proper collaboration helps them familiarise themselves, as well as get integrated into the team. Connected and collaborative teams also give the new employees a sense of belonging and prevent them from feeling alienated.
5. Ready access to knowledge:
A single source of truth is important to ensure that all the important and historical information is available for employees to access. Employee-created resources also need to be stored in a central place. This is a must, especially from a new employee perspective. A lot of their concerns about work and tasks can be taken care of by making sure that the right information is made available to them at the right time. However, this needs to be done with the right access controls in place to ensure there is no data theft or loss.
Leveraging BPM for employee onboarding
Business Process Management (BPM) can be a great enabler in streamlining onboarding for remote employees. Since BPM brings in end-to-end visibility, and process transparency and ensures a single source of process truth, it greatly enhances the knowledge sharing and collaboration for remote new recruits.
Choosing a cloud-based software, such as PRIME BPM can help you in making employees feel connected with the organisation, get clarity on work expectations and quickly become productive. PRIME BPM software comes with many powerful functionalities, including an inbuilt RACI matrix for clarifying roles and responsibilities, chat and collaboration features, a centralised repository to ensure easy access to data, etc., to facilitate the experience of new recruits.
To explore the full range of remote employee onboarding features included in PRIME BPM, register here for a free trial.