Virtual onboarding: the new reality

The deep trep­i­da­tion felt by Jee­van Singh when she was appoint­ed finance offi­cer of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Fan­bytes in Sep­tem­ber is relat­able for those who have endured a remote onboard­ing process in the past year, espe­cial­ly work­ers at the start of their career.

“Start­ing a new job in lock­down was ter­ri­fy­ing,” says the 23 year old, who in 2019 grad­u­at­ed from Roy­al Hol­loway, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. “I thought I’d feel like an out­sider and lack the essen­tial team-work­ing envi­ron­ment. Above all, I was wor­ried that I’d miss out on train­ing and be left to fig­ure out how to do things.”

Fan­bytes’ suite of online col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and a “fan­tas­tic cul­ture” of fre­quent, vir­tu­al meet­ings and social events soon allayed her fears, though. “For any­one look­ing to start a new job remote­ly or for busi­ness­es want­i­ng to cre­ate a more inclu­sive cul­ture, reg­u­lar face-to-face calls and chats should be at the top of the agen­da,” rec­om­mends Singh. “While I haven’t met any of my col­leagues in per­son yet – and they may all turn out to be cat­fish­ing [cre­at­ing a fake iden­ti­ty] – I nev­er­the­less feel like I know them well.”

Char­lie John­son, founder and chief exec­u­tive of Brighter­Box, a Lon­don-based recruit­ment firm that places grad­u­ates with star­tups, agrees that for younger tal­ent begin­ning a full-time job vir­tu­al­ly is par­tic­u­lar­ly daunt­ing. His organisation’s research reveals that more than a third (36 per cent) of respon­dents feel less con­fi­dent about start­ing a role remote­ly, although 44 per cent say it would make no dif­fer­ence.

“Ulti­mate­ly, what new starters are look­ing for in 2021 is plen­ty of con­tact time: one to ones with their direct man­agers as well as the wider team and vir­tu­al socials to get to know team­mates on a more per­son­al and less for­mal lev­el,” says John­son.

Managing a remote team by example

What about remote onboard­ing as a new man­ag­er? Hav­ing amassed 16 years’ expe­ri­ence work­ing in finan­cial ser­vices, Cedrick Parize was per­haps not as ter­ri­fied as Singh when, last March, he joined MUFG as Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa head of inter­nal audit for the bank’s glob­al mar­kets. How­ev­er, 12 months after he took up his posi­tion, Parize is yet to meet any of the eight-strong team, two of whom he hired, in the flesh.

“Ini­tial­ly, with it being the start of the first lock­down, it was a chal­lenge to get a feel for the team,” he says. “So much human com­mu­ni­ca­tion is per­formed through body lan­guage and expe­ri­enc­ing a person’s ener­gy.”

From the out­set at MUFG, Parize was open mind­ed and flex­i­ble, even agree­ing to resched­ule meet­ings so they didn’t clash with Joe Wicks’ work­out ses­sions, and keen to dis­play his human side. 

“I encour­aged video calls and switched my cam­era on, no mat­ter how bad my out­fit was,” he says. “There was no pres­sure for oth­ers to do the same, but I was hap­py to see that through lead­ing by exam­ple, and slow­ly build­ing up rela­tion­ships, my team began to feel more com­fort­able, turn­ing on their cam­eras. This change helped enor­mous­ly to gain a sense of each indi­vid­ual.”

Clear­ly, the coro­n­avirus cri­sis has trans­formed hir­ing prac­tices and tal­ent man­age­ment. While organ­i­sa­tions are strug­gling to keep pace with the change neces­si­tat­ed by gov­ern­ment-enforced remote work­ing, the direc­tion of trav­el is evi­dent. “Vir­tu­al recruit­ment and onboard­ing are undoubt­ed­ly here to stay,” says Jon Addi­son, vice pres­i­dent at pro­fes­sion­al social net­work LinkedIn. 

Indeed, 84 per cent of the 1,500 human resources and tal­ent pro­fes­sion­als sur­veyed from around the world for LinkedIn’s The Future of Recruit­ing report pre­dict vir­tu­al recruit­ing will out­last COVID-19.

Winning the war for talent in 90 days

Addi­son argues that as the war for tal­ent inten­si­fies, organ­i­sa­tions must sharp­en their remote onboard­ing, career devel­op­ment and train­ing capa­bil­i­ties. “The first few days in a job are extreme­ly impor­tant in set­ting up new join­ers well,” he says. “Remote onboard­ing can make that chal­leng­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for younger gen­er­a­tions join­ing the work­force who may not know what to expect.”

The most pro­gres­sive organ­i­sa­tions will start the expe­ri­ence well in advance of the new hire’s first day. Addi­son says this is achieved by con­nect­ing them to their team, ensur­ing home office equip­ment arrives, if remote work­ing is pos­si­ble, and send­ing a wel­come pack­age that includes infor­ma­tion about com­pa­ny cul­ture and explain­ing what the com­ing days and weeks might entail.

As vice pres­i­dent of peo­ple and oper­a­tions at Class­Pass, the fit­ness and well­ness net­work that hit a $1‑billion val­u­a­tion last year, and with almost 400 employ­ees dis­trib­uted across 30 coun­tries, Hollen Spatz has had to ensure her organisation’s remote onboard­ing runs smooth­ly. 

All hires join a pro­gramme coined “the 90-day warm-up”. The onboard­ing process starts with “a few sur­pris­es in the mail, includ­ing some com­pa­ny swag” and a per­son­alised note from the Class­Pass lead­er­ship team. The pro­gramme con­sists of a series of ses­sions intro­duc­ing new team mem­bers to var­i­ous aspects of the organ­i­sa­tion over a three-month peri­od.

“Onboard­ing and staff reten­tion go hand in hand,” says Spatz. “An employee’s expe­ri­ence in the first 90 days of their role will have a mas­sive impact on their hap­pi­ness, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and longevi­ty with a com­pa­ny.”

To accel­er­ate the assim­i­la­tion, Class­Pass has also cre­at­ed a series of vir­tu­al check-ins with man­agers so begin­ners are clear on their role expec­ta­tions and have ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise ques­tions.

Final­ly, Spatz acknowl­edges that the remote onboard­ing process requires con­tin­u­ous tweak­ing. “We used to send out gift cards for a wel­come lunch over Zoom, but quick­ly realised peo­ple might not feel com­fort­able eat­ing in front of new col­leagues on cam­era,” she con­cedes. 

With remote onboard­ing and vir­tu­al train­ing set to remain, there’s plen­ty for busi­ness lead­ers to chew over to improve the recipe for suc­cess.