Remote onboarding tips

My first remote onboarding experience….

Starting a commercial role on day 1 of lockdown was always going to come with it’s challenges. The reality is that this wasn’t just a first time for me, it was a first time for the business too, so we all had to figure it out together.

This is a challenge many businesses had to face due to Covid-19 lockdown and something that we’ll continue to face until offices will be back to run business as usual, which is something a lot of large companies don’t see happening before the end of 2020.

Therefore, I wanted to run a Seenit project to share and collect ideas and create an open forum in what was a unique situation at the time. Getting everyone working together and sharing their thoughts certainly made it an easier start for me, and the hope is that we’d use these learnings to be even better the next time a new starter joins the business. 

Have a look at what we’ve put together:

So what have we learned from our own remote onboarding experience?

• The first day is the hardest, having a welcoming call or a personal welcoming video from your supervisors and team members makes it a whole lot easier

• Getting to know the processes, the product and how things are done at the business are easily done remotely, it is however, equally important to have the chance to speak with everyone from across the business and get to know the people and the company culture.

• And especially getting to know people personally - have informal conversations, ask personal questions about family, interests or even their favourite food?

• Having clarity around ones own responsibilities and those of each team and person helps

• Never be afraid to ask anyone questions about anything

• Key to a remote onboarding experience is patience and staying focused

Luckly, at Seenit we are a small team, which made the getting to know people part much easier. However, for large companies like Vodafone, who also have continued to hire and on-board new employees during lockdown, this might have been a more challenging endeavour.

So what they did was was brilliant - they started ‘Video Diaries of a Virtual Recruit’ asking their new joiners to document their experience of joining Vodafone during this global pandemic. Watch two such video diaries below.

Meet Catherine:

Meet Simon:

Starting a new job isn’t easy at the best of times, but being able to share and communicate through video made me feel much more connected to my colleagues who I still haven’t even met in person yet.

So, what have you learned from your remote onboarding experience? Please share your comments below, and get in touch if you’d like to learn more on how user-generated video can be a great tool to engage and onboard your new hires.

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