Best Practices of Virtual Onboarding for New Employees

By: Karen Spencer, Area Vice President, OrasiLabs Product Manager

Everyone remembers their first day at the job. It’s usually a mix of excitement, curiosity, and sometimes a little hesitation. But as the modern workplace becomes more and more digital, it can be common for new employees to feel disconnected. Virtual onboarding can be very useful when preparing employees to use software applications that they will use on the job.

In the Gartner 2020 Digital Workplace Survey, 68 percent of respondents agreed that more C-level executives are involved in the digital workplace since COVID-19. The pandemic has rapidly elevated many digital workplace technologies from nice-to-have to imperative. This is a world where the ‘new work nucleus’ – a potent combination of SaaS-based personal productivity, collaboration, and communication tools – rules. It represents the digital workplace infrastructures that underpin today’s remote work environment.

Reliance on cloud-based business technologies has increased because the cloud can offer lower operating costs, simplicity, and can continuously provide more functionality to employees. There is a strong emergence of the distance economy or business activities that don’t rely on face-to-face activity. It has been seen that even organizations with operating models that depend on first-party or hosted events have switched to virtual alternatives – and quickly at that. The same effect has been witnessed for internal meetings, client interactions, new hire interviews, etc. LinkedIn’s The Future of Recruiting Report predicted that virtual recruiting would outlast COVID-19.

How to Onboard New Employees Virtually?
Today, many organizations embrace virtual platforms to recruit and onboard new employees. Following some of these best practices can help ensure that the onboarding process is smooth and encourages self-sufficiency.

1. Try to cut out repetitive and mundane tasks by using automation. It saves time for new employees and the onboarding team. Streamlined class setup maximizes learning time.

2. Providing a reasonable level of self-service tools will let employees work at their own pace. A virtual training solution that emphasizes time management and engagement can make all the difference.

3. The welcome and attention that an employee receives in the first three months can directly affect their success, productivity, and happiness at an organization. So, try to use technology in the best possible way to add variety and personalization to your employee onboarding program. A hands-on experience provides greater engagement and understanding of any software applications that new employees will be using on the job.

4. Don’t let remote onboarding end up as a bland and impersonal exercise. Virtual onboarding can be as engaging and warm as a traditional classroom training. A host of features and templates available on most virtual platforms can help to achieve this such as peer-to-peer discussions and hands-on assignments that can have a lasting impact.

5. Inform and equip the new employee with pertinent information and skill-building through superior and engaging training. This can be done in a well-integrated and fun way by using engaging presentations, walk-throughs, and virtual orientation, Virtual training labs can inundate good collaboration and greater engagement in your sessions.

6. Do all this by using intelligent tools based on the cloud models to achieve a lot of impact with minimum costs and optimum elasticity.

Starting a new job is hard and connecting with fellow employees and company culture can be difficult from home. Use virtual training platforms to your advantage to make your new employees feel welcome and enthusiastic about joining your company.