Honesty and continuous constructive criticism should be a core part of your company culture. You can give them that gift by establishing an employee resource group (ERG) for interns and new hires. This allows interns to feel more connected with the experience because they’re going through it with others, not by themselves. Your interns should each have a specific team they’re working with, but every company needs healthy collaboration to perform at their best.
When roles, responsibilities, and goals are clear upfront, employees can focus on contributing meaningfully from the start. The earlier you set those expectations, the more likely it is that the employee will be able to become acquainted with your company’s structure. Integrate sessions that communicate company values, rituals, DE&I initiatives, and internal communities early on. Consider informal onboarding lunches, virtual coffee chats, or storytelling sessions.
🚀 Ready to Transform Your Onboarding Process? Start Here!
Employee onboarding trends in 2025 are drastically different from previous years. Traditional onboarding programs are no longer effective—companies must embrace AI, structured programs, gamification, and digital transformation to ensure a great onboarding experience for every new employee. One of the biggest shifts in onboarding trends for 2025 is the move toward continuous onboarding—a process that extends beyond the traditional 30, 60, or even 90-day period. Companies are recognizing that onboarding is not a one-time event but an ongoing journey that supports long-term employee success and retention. ✅ Train managers on how to onboard new employees effectively.✅ Executives should conduct welcome sessions and company culture briefings.✅ Managers must provide continuous support beyond the first 30 days.
- Remote employees need explicit guidance on topics that might be implicitly understood in office environments.
- When onboarding new hires, you can’t afford missed opportunities, miscommunication, and stalled progress due to issues with work tools.
- These chats are an investment in your work culture and your teams’ collaboration, so they’re appropriate for work hours.
This allows them to get acquainted with other members and know who to approach whenever they need help. This three-month period is about guiding the new employees as they take on projects and settle in. They will spend most of this day completing paperwork, learning about the company, and meeting colleagues. Complete these tasks one to two weeks before the new hire’s start date. This phase prepares the new hire (and their team) for their new role and gets them excited about joining the company.
Regular video calls help new hires feel connected to their team and provide opportunities for face-to-face interactions. You need to regularly review and update the process while taking your employees’ feedback into account. In place for a physical work environment, you can use fun team meetings and video calls to welcome new hires. Be sure to list out the steps new hires need to take to complete the process to ensure they don’t get confused along the way.
- Many new hires report that virtual onboarding includes receiving equipment in advance, followed by a scheduled video call with IT or HR to help set up email, systems access, and introductory training.
- Onboarding is a time for asking as many questions as possible so new hires can get to know the company and codebase quickly.
- Build opportunities for people to connect and communicate, and you’re on the path to creating a fantastic employee experience.
- In addition to setting objectives, nonprofits should consider incorporating various learning modalities into their onboarding programs.
- The company may reduce turnover and raise employee satisfaction by addressing problems promptly and identifying areas that require improvement.
Day 1: Setting the tone
Structure, clarity, and early wins go a long way in building confidence. As one of the world’s largest all-remote companies, they’ve built an onboarding system so detailed, it runs over several weeks, with guides, buddy systems, and a fully documented handbook. In the dynamic landscape of remote work, effective onboarding practices are the foundation of a successful and engaged remote workforce. The company may reduce turnover and raise employee satisfaction by addressing problems promptly and identifying areas remote onboarding best practices that require improvement. Moreover, introducing newcomers to the industry they will be working in is invaluable. This provides context and a broader understanding of the market, competition, and trends, enabling employees to make informed decisions and contributions.
New hires receive a welcome pack, including an email with login credentials and access to the company’s platforms and servers. This first interaction sets a positive tone and provides clear onboarding instructions. Welcoming new hires with a positive onboarding experience is crucial to set the tone right from the start.
Conduct Training on Job Roles
Schedule all the activities, such as virtual meetings and frequent check-ins, around the agenda to ensure the new hires don’t feel ignored or overlooked. Next, let’s look at the checklist that will successfully help onboard new employees remotely. They can affect employees even after they become full-fledged members of an organization. In this process, learners receive instruction face to face but from the comfort of their homes. Remote working has paved the way for Learning and Development (L&D) teams to incorporate e-learning courses into corporate training programs to replace traditional classroom training. In the evolving landscape of work, the surge in remote employment has necessitated a rethink of traditional hiring practices.
Creating an onboarding orientation from scratch can be an arduous exercise, but will pay dividends as you repeat these sessions with each new employee and add to them over time as your company evolves. Avoid having new employees simply sift through documentation and your internal wiki by themselves on day one. Instead, prepare presentations and workshops that provide an overview of your company, products and services, IT and security training, and role-specific context.
Top Recruitment Trends for 2025: Key Hiring Trends Shaping Talent Acquisition
For instance, in the first crewed hot air balloon flight example, if the viewer had simply described a large, colorful, and hollow object instead of naming it a piñata, they would have stayed on target. Therefore, a general rule for remote viewing is always to describe the target and avoid naming it. Don’t expect to get anything exactly right – but did something correlate? Did the color, shape, weather, or some feeling you had when you thought about the Target ID end up being true about this image? Encourage users to share their experiences, tips, and advice related to remote work to foster a supportive community atmosphere.
Start with thoughtful basics
Digital platforms are available all day, every day, allowing new employees to complete onboarding tasks on-demand, at their own pace and convenience. Although employees complete most of the process online, they may still meet with HR for document signing, training, or policy reviews. In some cases, digital onboarding still involves manual steps, where HR staff guide employees through each task. The assisted digital onboarding process combines automation with personalized support.
When it comes to how to onboard remote employees, it’s always best to have a plan. A well-structured remote onboarding process ensures that new hires feel engaged, informed, and set up for success from the very start. Without a structured approach, remote employees can struggle with unclear expectations, lack of connection, and difficulty accessing key resources. The way we work has changed, and so has the way we welcome new employees. Unlike traditional onboarding, which relies on face-to-face interactions, remote onboarding depends on digital tools to help new hires feel like part of the team from day one. And it’s no longer just a temporary solution—remote onboarding is an essential part of building a strong, connected modern workforce.
An onboarding cycle includes all phases from preboarding through the first 90 days or more. Effective employee onboarding boosts retention by up to 82% and improves productivity by over 70%. It helps new hires get up to speed faster, strengthens cultural alignment, and enhances employee engagement. Encourage new hires to learn from others by observing different teams in action or joining group learning sessions. Rather than handbooks, use interactive demos or videos to walk new hires through core tools like intranet chat/video conferencing and more. Embedding tool walkthroughs directly into your LMS lessons (using screenshots or screen recordings) helps new team members get hands-on faster, with less confusion.
With virtual training for new remote hires, you should go beyond your regular training At this point, the employee should be focusing on completing the necessary training and onboarding materials while getting used to their new environment. If your culture is social, schedule introduction calls, happy hours, or lunch-and-learns with new hires and employees from across departments. If you don’t set a clear and international onboarding schedule, technical training and paperwork can monopolize a new hire’s experience. Danica has led Deel’s onboarding process for several hundred people (and counting), but she doesn’t do it alone.
Digital transformation can now be prioritised, so older tools with too many manual processes can be replaced with software that’s more accommodating of your recruitment strategy. One in five Britons want to work remotely all the time – and, in 2021, 8% of workers in the UK did exactly that and didn’t go to their workplace at all during the year. Working remotely has become more commonplace in recent years, so it’s important you ensure your onboarding process is suitable for this group of employees. Apply these best practices for remote onboarding to ensure that employees have the resources they need, feel a part of the culture and are productive from day one.
Week 1: Training & Engagement
Visibility is oftentimes a problem when virtually onboarding new hires. It can be tempting to micromanage them to ensure the work gets done – but you DON’T want to do this. Micromanaging a remote team can lead to a lack of creativity and fast-track employee burnout. Creating a refined onboarding process can prevent this from happening and rather boost employee productivity and retention. In this Process Street post, we’re giving you 10 remote onboarding best practices to help you get started. Beyond immediate effects, strong virtual onboarding delivers lasting benefits.