Onboarding

Remote Employee Onboarding: 8 Ways To Create an Exceptional Employee Experience

2024-10-24T09:49:17-04:00

Being thoughtful about onboarding remote employees is crucial for fairness and employee loyalty.

Across the globe, companies have embraced remote and hybrid workplaces as a lasting part of how work gets done. For many organizations, there's no going back—remote work is here to stay, and processes must evolve to support the remote employee experience.

Nowhere is this more true than in onboarding remote employees. It’s hard to create an onboarding experience that makes people feel like they belong somewhere, when that “somewhere” isn’t a physical space. But it’s a critical part of both reinforcing employees’ decision to join your company and strengthening your company culture.

Here are a few ways you can ensure that your remote onboarding program immerses remote employees in your workplace culture.

1. Get the organization excited about new remote employees

Encourage your leaders to anticipate greatness from fresh talent. No one should feel like they have to prove themselves to anyone else – ever.

You hire remote workers for a reason, right? They’ve done the work to earn an offer. Just like onsite team members, remote employees have the qualities and skills needed to add value to the team and help your organization achieve its mission.

Here are a few ways to prepare the company to give remote employees a warm welcome:

Ensure leaders articulate how the company’s success and shared purpose is accelerated by new hires
Make an announcement that celebrates new hires’ unique gifts and who they are as human beings to help your employees get to know them
Invite new hires to write a few words about themselves so that team members can identify any shared interests or interests that excite curiosity

Connections happen quickly when there is more than just work to share.

2. Assign a “new hire buddy” that embodies your company culture

New remote workers need a friendly face to go to for clarity in the onboaring process. Having someone that each new hire “knows” can also foster the kind of social support that strengthens remote teams.

A buddy system should include regularly scheduled check-ins. This creates a dedicated safe space for new remote employees to ask questions they don’t feel comfortable asking in a group Zoom or Slack channel.

Connections happen quickly when there is more than just work to share.

Think carefully when choosing who to tap as a new hire buddy. An ideal buddy is someone who:

Embodies the organization's core values
Acts as an ambassador of the business
Thrives as a go-to guide for others

It’s important to be sure that the buddy genuinely wants to be and enjoys being a part of the journey others are on. (Bonus points if coaching is a part of your buddy’s development.)

3. Encourage virtual “coffee meetings” with varying roles in the business

It’s important to set time aside each day for your new hires to establish relationships as soon as possible. This is especially true if your onboarding process is very information-heavy. This deliberate approach to virtual office connections in a remote environment will accelerate team camaraderie.

Most of these casual meetings should be with employees outside of the new hire’s own role so they can learn about different aspects of the business and connect with the people that can provide context for the big picture.

Since every organization is unique, these informal meetings will enable your new hires to more efficiently connect the dots of your business and associate the information they are getting from the training with the roles that perform these important duties.

In an office setting, these connections may have happened organically. In a remote setting, these dedicated meetings create a more intentional way of connecting to your workplaces’ social ecosystem than ever before.

4. Create an ERG made up of first-year remote employees & empower them meet periodically

It’s already hard to be the new employee in an office setting. In the remote world, it’s even harder. Creating a remote Employee Resource Group (ERG) for new hires to share learnings will foster a sense of camaraderie early because everyone in the group can relate to one another.

This ERG is especially useful when the remote employees are in different roles, because learning in one role could benefit everyone in the group. You can provide prompts for the group meetings to have more intention or allow for free-form discovery and natural conversation.

There’s no wrong way to let a group like this connect – it’s more about common ground than having a set agenda. Bonus points for creating a chat channel just for first year employees.

5. Be vulnerable and share where the business has opportunities to improve

No business has perfect processes in place and there’s always room to evolve and grow with the world around us. It’s essential for leaders and individual contributors to voice what’s not working, especially if your company is new to operating remotely.

Your new hires, having started in a completely remote environment, will have firsthand knowledge and ideas for improving the remote experience. (In fact, the inspiration for this post came from a new remote employee!)

6. Meet remote employees where they are at, not the other way around

Remote workers do not have the luxury of being shoulder-to-shoulder with a veteran employee to ask quick questions or get in-the-moment guidance.

In a remote work environment, that kind of invaluable support happens asynchronously—a question asked on your company’s messaging platform gets answered when someone is available, and in some cases that might not be for hours.

This is especially true when employees are spread across time zones, as well as when companies wisely give remote employees flexibility to incorporate work-life balance into their schedules.

While onboarding remote employees, it’s important to give them as much time as they need to learn about the core business and its products/services/offerings, as well as the psychological safety to ask as many questions as possible.

Have 30-, 60- and 90-day development checklists for new hires to assess their needs and confidence in different areas. Avoid the expectation that remote workers know everything by a certain date; instead, embrace the way they learn and the journey to help them get there.

7. Double up the one-on-ones with people managers

Having one-on-ones with direct reports should be on every manager’s schedule, but new hires in a remote environment should have twice as many one-on-ones for at least 90 days into the onboarding process.

This extra “face time” is essential for establishing a remote mentor-mentee relationship. It takes time to develop and understand each other’s communication styles, so managers must spend extra time with new hires to cultivate a bond early on that facilitates great communication.

8. Celebrate each milestone with a proper shout out on your communication tool

We’ve all heard the idea of celebrating small wins. Remote workplaces in particular can benefit from this culture-strengthening practice.

For example, managers can recap what the 90-day onboarding journey of a remote employee has brought to the team. Share what the team has learned from them and how they’ve already contributed.

Collect anecdotes from those who have spent time with this new hire to share words of encouragement and make your pride in this employee known. Celebrate remote employees’ work milestones and encourage colleagues to give recognition and praise freely.

Our research shows that when people are made to feel welcome, the organization not only survives during a recession, it thrives. First impressions last much longer than the initial moment, so focus your time spent onboarding remote employees on connecting.

Your new remote employees will have an unforgettable onboarding experience in a space they look forward to logging into every day.

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How Great Companies Build Trust Through the Hiring and Onboarding Process

2024-09-23T08:47:36-04:00

You never have a second chance to make a first impression. Here’s what the best companies are doing to start things off on the right foot.

Building trust with employees starts long before their first day on the job.

From the recruiting process through their first few months at the company, employees are looking for signals both overt and subliminal, about their value at the organization.

“When someone joins your organization, you should make sure that they know you were expecting them — and that you couldn’t wait for them to get there,” says Michael C. Bush, CEO at ��[�ʘ��®.

This leadership behavior — “hiring” — is all about making sure new people who join the organization receive a warm welcome. Here’s how the best companies make sure employees feel like a valued and appreciated member of the team before they ever walk in the door on their first day.

Recruiting for culture ‘add’

When creating a welcoming and inclusive culture, great workplaces start by making sure that everyone believes that no matter who they are, this company is a place where they can belong. Prospective employees are looking for signals both large and small that indicate whether their new company will value and respect them.

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“When you first start at new company and you have to fill out a job application, if it only says male and female at the start, that probably tells you a lot,” says Brian Reaves, chief belonging, diversity, and equity officer at UKG. “It’s saying [leaders] don’t understand that people don’t just identify in a binary manner.”

The best workplaces use their values to guide every step of the recruitment process, and look for people who add to the culture, not just those who “fit” the culture.

Companies like Dow develop metrics to ensure they attract the widest range of talent. Dow’s scorecard measures five different metrics: global representation of women, U.S. ethnic minority representation, participation in employee resource groups (ERGs), spending with diverse suppliers, and overall employee satisfaction.

Every leader at Dow also has a dashboard that shows the diversity of their business group and key metrics like hiring and voluntary turnover. This level of analysis allows Dow to learn from itself, with teams that are having more success recruiting and retaining a diverse set of employees sharing their strategies with others.

It’s also crucial to consider the talent pipeline and make investments to ensure more people can see a future for themselves in your organization.

At Cadence, which hires primarily college graduates with advanced degrees in computer science and technology, a revamped outreach program on campuses created a much bigger talent pool for the company. Roles were changed to target undergraduates and focus on internal training, and a wider range of universities were targeted for recruitment.

The result? In 2023, Cadence saw a 25% year-over-year increase in the number of women hired at the company.

Values revealed in the hiring process

How a candidate experiences the hiring process can build or break trust. Did you feel connected to leaders, or did you feel like your time was being wasted? Did the process bring the company’s values to life — or was the experience jarringly different from the values the company claims to uphold?

A respectful and unbiased process is a strong signal to employees that the company knows what they are looking for and will be committed to their long-term success.

To ensure that every employee has a good experience, consider standardizing the process across teams and departments. At Workiva, after realizing that its more than 60 product development teams had their own norms and tools to interview and hire candidates, it built a group of “hiring ambassadors” that took responsibility for interviewing all candidates on competency models and advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the process.

And the process has shown results: a decrease in the time-to-fill rate for open roles and a lower early turnover rate across the organization.

A standardized hiring experience doesn’t mean that every employee should be treated exactly the same. Great companies will change the process to fit the needs of the candidate, such as HP Inc. and its Spectrum Success Program, which helps people with autism, as well as those with developmental disabilities, share their abilities in a format that suits them.

The hiring process is also an opportunity to connect employees with your culture. At NVIDIA, its “Insider Interviews” program allows candidates to meet with one or more of its community resource groups (what it calls its ERGs).

These brief chats aren’t used to evaluate the candidate. They simply allow potential new employees to connect with the culture at NVIDIA and start to build the network that will be vital for their success if they join the company.

Going beyond the handbook for orientation

The first day at the organization is make or break for new employees.

“You can email or send new hires a note in the mail before they start, announce them to other employees in advance, take them to lunch their first week, and help them get integrated into your culture,” Bush says. “If someone gets to work and those things aren’t there, trust dips a bit. … They wonder if you really want them there, or if they’re an afterthought.”

Many great companies give new employees a peer or buddy to help them get integrated into their new work culture. At Tanium, new hires are paired with a buddy and an mentor on their first day, with their buddy answering questions and facilitating connections within the company. Mentors familiarize new hires with role-specific details and new hires often shadow their assigned mentor in both internal and external meetings.

Great workplaces also make the first day fun. At Veterans United Home Loans, new employees participate in a team bonding exercise, which could include painting rocks, designing a custom t-shirt, making charcuterie boards, or a Nintendo tournament. At NVIDIA, new hires are invited to join a campus tour and new-hire volunteer activity — immediately connecting new employees with NVIDIA’s values.

Beyond professional success, the onboarding process provides an opportunity to learn about candidates’ personal goals and aspirations.

At WestPac Wealth Partners, employees joining the firm are asked to share their goals, both for their career and their lives outside of work.

“If you work with me and make a bunch of money, and the rest of your life sucks, then I failed you as a leader,” says Travis Scribner, managing partner at WestPac. “I want to see you win in all areas of life.”

Great companies know that onboarding is an important touchpoint in the employee lifecycle, but it can’t be the last time you ask important questions about goals and aspirations. The conversations must be ongoing, grounded in that important first impression an employer makes on an employee’s first day.

How Workplaces Can Address the Loneliness Crisis

2023-05-22T10:17:30-04:00

The top public health officer says loneliness is harming Americans’ health. Here’s how employers can fight back.

The U.S. is facing an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.”

That’s the warning from Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general.

“About one in two adults in the U.S. experience loneliness,” Murthy wrote in an advisory released in May.

This loneliness has significant health risks.

“The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity,” Murthy wrote.

What is loneliness?

Murthy defines loneliness as “a subjective distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections.”

Loneliness is not to be confused with solitude, for example. A person can be alone, but not feel lonely. Nor is loneliness the same thing as social isolation, though the two experiences are related.

Social isolation is the lack of relationships, group membership, or other forms of social interaction. Loneliness is a subjective internal state.

Loneliness at work

Just because you have a job doesn’t mean you are finding connection at work.

Just two in 10 employees in the U.S. have a “best friend” at work, according to Gallup. In data from health insurer Cigna, loneliness increases according to demographic factors like age, gender, ethnicity, and income.

"We all want to know that we belong somewhere. We want to know that we’re accepted. We want to know that we’re seen.” - Jen Fisher, chief well-being officer, Deloitte

People from underrepresented groups are more likely to be lonely, with 75% of Hispanic adults and 68% of Black adults reporting loneliness. Lower income workers are lonelier than higher income earners. Young adults are more likely to be lonely than seniors.

Added to the picture is the advent of remote work and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A pre-pandemic study by organizational psychologist Lynn Holdsworth showed that full-time remote work increases loneliness by 67%.

In ��[�ʘ��® research, remote workers are less likely to feel like they make a difference, and only two in three remote and hybrid workers said they could be their true self at work.

Taking action

Before launching any programs to combat loneliness in the workplace, start by asking workers what they need.

On the “Better” podcast, Jen Fisher, chief well-being officer at Deloitte, shared questions to ask before starting a well-being initiative.

“The No. 1 and lowest cost thing that you can do — because there’s no cost to it other than engaging with people and getting a little bit of their time — is asking your workforce, ‘Hey, what do you want? What do you need? What would be meaningful? What are the barriers in the way of you doing these things for yourself, or taking advantage of the things that the organization is providing you?’”

The answers you receive could help avoid misdirecting funds into programming that employees won’t use.

“It’s really powerful to engage your workforce in this type of conversation,” Fisher says. “Because even if you don’t do exactly what they ask you to do, the simple fact that you asked them what they thought and what they needed goes a long way.”

A focus on belonging

Many organizations are focused on belonging to try and create connection between employees.

World Wide Technology, as part of its diversity, equity & inclusion strategy, has implemented a storytelling program to help employees connect. As part of its efforts, Accenture has focused on belonging to ensure that every employee feels valued and connected.

Employee resource groups (ERGs) have become a core part of how many organizations think about helping employees connect with one another.

Visa developed a partnership with its Return to Office team to hold ice cream socials on the third Wednesday of every month. Attendees can visit booths for each of its ERGs, and sign-up to become a member.

The ice cream socials offer a clear example of how companies can incentivize workers to build relationships with each other without forcing the issue. And Visa says the regular events have been successful in not only increasing ERG participation, but also raising awareness about the role of its ERGs across management and leadership teams.

"The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity." - Dr. Vivek Murthy, surgeon general

Friendship in the workplace isn’t a frivolous side show. When employees have friends at the office, they’re more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay with the organization.

“It’s a sense of belonging,” says Fisher. “If I connect with another human being, I feel like I belong at the organization, and that’s what we all want. We all want to know that we belong somewhere. We want to know that we’re accepted. We want to know that we’re seen.”

The importance of onboarding

It’s crucial that employees feel welcome when joining the organization. According to ��[�ʘ�� research, employees who are made to feel welcome when joining a new team are:

60% more likely to feel their job is meaningful
2x more likely to have well-being

A warm welcome is also a crucial employee experience during economic downturns. When employees feel welcomed, their organization is more resilient during recessions.

For many organizations, a new hire buddy program is an important opportunity for employes to build relationships within the organization.

At Tanium, new hires are paired with a buddy and a mentor. On day one, new hires meet with both the mentor and the new hire buddy, as well as their manager. Their buddy is a resource for any questions, a facilitator of connections, and an additional support to ensure new team members are having a positive onboarding experience.

Mentors at Tanium play a different role, working to familiarize new hires with role-specific nuances, and new hires often shadow their mentors in both internal and external meetings.

At PulteGroup, every new hire is assigned an onboarding experience partner. These special ambassadors can come from any role level or department of the organization and serve on a volunteer basis.

A new hire’s onboarding partner meets them in-person on their first day and guides them around the facility, introducing people in every department and familiarizing them with the workplace.

Remote connections

When employees don’t all commute to a central location, it’s harder to form close relationships. Many companies focus on remote onboarding, but how can companies continue to reinforce those connections once onboarding ends?

At Atlassian, a peer-to-peer recognition program called “Kudos” is one answer. The program allows employees to nominate their colleagues for their efforts and recipients receive gift cards, books, specialty beverages, and more.

When employees are able to recognize one another, relationships and their importance to the organization are reinforced.

Again, it’s important to ask employees what they need. Deloitte’s Fisher recommends asking the team: “How can we support one another? What do we want our team behaviors and norms to look like?”

This is when teams can set expectations around standard working hours and communications tools. Setting expectations allows team members to log off while still feeling connected to their colleagues. When norms aren’t communicated, employees are left to worry about what they might be missing when they aren’t sitting at the computer — which can exacerbate loneliness.

A priority for leaders

At the best organizations, leaders make it a top priority to connect on a personal level and build relationships with employees.

At Wegmans, one-on-one listening sessions are part of a wider push for all managers to build relationships with employees. “Relationship building” is on the performance plan for all division leaders and store managers, and weekly, informal conversations with employees are encouraged.

The relationship goes two ways, too. When employees feel like they belong, they are more likely to innovate and give extra effort.

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Do your workers feel a sense of belonging? Benchmark your employee experience against the best data available with ��[�ʘ�� Certification™.

YNAB’s Award-Winning Remote Workplace Culture

2021-08-09T07:00:36-04:00

A look inside the company culture of the two-time best small workplace.

Is Culture Fit Discrimination?

2021-03-04T14:45:41-05:00

If you’ve ever looked at the people in an average bar, an average university dining hall, or even an average high school cafeteria, you understand how “culture fit” can perpetuate homogeneity.

Most social groups are made up of people from similar backgrounds, who are the same race, are around the same age, and have the same interests. Organizations often lack diversity for the same reason – because “culture fit” can encourage interviewers to overlook prospects that look, think, and behave differently from themselves.

When most people think of “culture fit,” they think of people whose company they see themselves enjoying in and outside of work. They look for people they could go to lunch with during the workday, have a beer with after work, or go to a game with on the weekend. If that’s what you are looking for in a candidate, your hiring practices may be discriminatory.

The culture fit myth

Hiring for culture fit means looking for someone who you and others will be comfortable around and who can integrate seamlessly; however, we are generally most comfortable around people who are similar to us. “Similar” can mean the same race, sexual orientation, gender, age, socio-economic background, or nationality.

Consider this: If you hire the candidate you could see yourself grabbing a beer with, does a person who doesn’t drink for religious reasons have a fair chance?

Why culture fit is a form of discrimination

Culture fit is discrimination because, even when it isn’t explicit or intentional, it is biased toward what is comfortable and familiar. It is difficult for some people to get their foot in the door if a workplace is implicitly restrictive about who will “fit in.”

If you hire the candidate you could see yourself grabbing a beer with, does a person who doesn’t drink for religious reasons have a fair chance?

Experience shows us that applying such criteria can not only create discriminatory hiring practices, but also severely limits the potential of current employees.

Cultural fit interview questions - why you should ditch them

I once ran a focus group for an organization and the discussion turned to the notion of favoritism. One woman explained that the best way for an employee to get to know a particular manager was weekend golf outings. But this manager never invited women.

“Culture fit” can create cultures or sub-cultures in a workplace that people may refer to as an “old boys club,” or a “fraternity” or “sorority,” because they represent a culture you must conform to if you want to be successful in the organization.

It’s why ��[�ʘ��® encourages organizations to err on the side of expanding their culture. The goal should be to create a culture in which a greater diversity of people can be welcomed and be their full, genuine selves at work, rather than settle for a narrow framework of culture where only certain people fit in.

In fact, hiring people who are unlike anyone else in the organization can bring more diversity of thought to an organization and fuel innovation.

“Culture fit” can create cultures or sub-cultures in a workplace that people may refer to as an “old boys club,” or a “fraternity” or “sorority,” because they represent a culture you must conform to if you want to be successful in the organization.

With all that being said, you must still determine if a candidate can be successful in your workplace. So how do you replace the traditional interview questions once used to determine how well people will get along with a prospective hire?

The secret to avoiding the culture fit trap in a job interview

To create a more diverse and inclusive workplace through hiring, we recommend having a set of broad values that connect to the greater vision and goals of the organization.

At ��[�ʘ��, for example, some of our values include curiosity and caring. So we don’t ask our candidates for their idea of a fun weekend and see if we agree. Instead, we pay attention to how thoughtful their questions are and how they care for those in their lives.

Care and curiosity can look different in different cultural contexts; but if we know that value is evident in some iteration, we can be confident a candidate will help ��[�ʘ�� achieve our mission.

The end result is a workplace of people who don’t have the same hobbies, don’t have the same social behaviors, and don’t have the same backgrounds. But it is also a workplace aligned on where it really matters and where people can bring their full, genuine selves to work regardless of who they are, what they look like, and where they come from.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably passionate about creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace. DEI is the foundation of our survey methodology and culture management platform. Reach out to us today about how we can help you reach your DEI goals.

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