The COVID-19 outbreak “forced” many companies to allow employees to work remotely or through hybrid work models. However, not all employers can transfer their workflow to a virtual setting. As a result, many organizations struggled with disengaged employees and reduced productivity.

Onboarding remote employees in a virtual setting can be more challenging than traditional on-site onboarding. However, this training and support are crucial for new employees in a hybrid work model to get on board and feel like they belong. 

To help you, we’ve compiled a comprehensive 7-step onboarding checklist for making hybrid work easier. 

 

1. Early Engagement

Making your employees feel included early on before the onboarding even starts is one of the best employee engagement strategies for workers who work at least a part of their time remotely.

There are different things you can do to build engagement early on. For instance: 

  • Send them a welcome package
  • Invite them to the relevant group chat or communication channel
  • Organize an informal virtual get together
  • Explain the career path progress and reward system for top performance
  • Communicate and keep in touch regularly during early onboarding

These are just some things that can help you engage your hybrid workers early in onboarding. 


Still trying to fill open positions? Check out some tips for hiring remote employees >


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2. Secure a Desk Setup in Advance

First and foremost, your employee needs the right equipment to start working. Think of what tools your new, hybrid-working employee needs to perform well in their job role when they work from home or remotely. These would be things like a PC or a laptop, a high-quality headset, webcam, phone, printer, desk supplies, keyboard, mouse, etc. 

Partially remote employees should enjoy the same work conditions as your in-office staff. Depending on the job role, there are different essentials they might need. For instance, if you’ve hired a designer on a hybrid schedule, you should probably provide a drawing pad (tablet). 

All in all, your flexible schedule employees should be audited and judged based on their performance. And to do that, you need to provide them with the same working conditions as on-site employees. 


Not all workspaces are created equal. Find out how workers can level-up their home offices or remote work spaces for greater productivity >


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3. Tools and Learning Materials

Once you’ve provided the necessary devices, arrange a virtual meeting between your new employee and your IT department or other onboarding person/group. At this point, you must provide your new hire with the following:

  • Login details for their new company email account
  • Credentials for any remote tools or software they will use
  • Company-wide communication channels and tools
  • Calendar access for client appointments or meetings
  • Proper training on cyber security
  • Digital employee handbooks and learning materials
  • Access to cloud storage and documentation

While assimilating to your company culture and figuring out how things work is more straightforward for regular, on-site employees, workers in a hybrid model might struggle to fit into their job roles. So, it’s your job to make their onboarding easier. 

4. Assign a Buddy for Mentorship

Another excellent onboarding strategy for employees on a remote or hybrid model is pairing them up with a mentor or a buddy who will be their primary contact person. New employees often have many questions but can be too embarrassed or afraid to ask. 

To make them feel more comfortable, provide one-on-one mentorship with an existing employee willing to show them all the ins and outs of the company. 

Provide an incentive for the mentor to push them to do their best when assimilating the new hire to the company culture. You’ll create a sense of unity and common goals by tying the mentor’s success to the new hire’s performance. 

5. Be Transparent

Be transparent throughout the entire onboarding process in every aspect of your operations.

Financial Transparency

Your new hire needs to be entirely in the clear when it comes to their earnings. Financial transparency can start as early as during recruiting by listing the salary range in your job ad. 

Another great way to promote financial transparency is by providing a pay stub with each salary. A pay stub breaks apart the employee’s wages, deductions, hours worked, etc. For this purpose, you can use a reliable paystub generator to list and calculate your income accurately. 

Transparent Goals and Performance Pointers

A significant part of a successful onboarding process is providing your new hire with KPIs you plan to measure and a list of short and long-term goals for their job role. They need to know what to expect and how you will measure their success, primarily if they work on-site only a few days a week. 

After going through virtual training, give your new employee straightforward tasks. Always set clear expectations and give reasonable deadlines. At the end of each successful project, schedule some time for re-evaluation and feedback with your new hires. 

6. Don’t Stop Communicating

Perhaps the greatest challenge in onboarding workers remotely or hybrid is the lack of physical proximity. Making a first impression and establishing personal connections with teammates so employees feel included is more challenging to achieve virtually. 

Since the employees aren’t always there to read your facial cues, you must open a constant communication line. In remote settings, overcommunicating is better than under-communicating. 

As stated by Gallup, onboarding shouldn’t be a one-way communication but a process where you socialize and engage the new hire. And this is especially vital for workers with a hybrid schedule. 


Did you know that HOW you conduct meetings can be just as important as IF you hold them? Here are a few ways you can make virtual meetings more engaging >


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7. Train Managers To Lead Hybrid Teams

According to a PWC remote work survey, training managers to lead teams in a remote environment is the second-largest gap or inefficiency, just behind childcare benefits. 

Learning to build flexible schedules is the first step to successfully making hybrid work easier. There is no one-fits-all solution for flexible schedules, so managers and leaders must learn what hybrid schedules work best for their business needs and different organizational job roles. 

A great manager must differentiate between essential staff on-site or on a minimally hybrid schedule and those who can work remotely. From then on, the manager needs to be able to rotate, and schedule staff shifts accordingly, always keeping employees' well-being in mind. 

Summary

To wrap it up, we have another best practice you can use to boost your hybrid onboarding process - personalization. Not every employee is the same; they all have different ways to process and learn new information at different speeds. 

Tailoring your onboarding process to each job role and allowing your new hires their own pace of progress can improve the employee’s integration and assimilation to the company culture, regardless of how many days they work on-site.

We hope you found this onboarding checklist helpful in making hybrid work easier for all your new hires. Although the onboarding for different roles could slightly alter these steps, the principles remain the same. 

Samantha Clark

Account Executive

A Warrington College of Business graduate, Samantha handles all client relations with The PayStub's top-tier partners.

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