Have a distributed team? Make remote hire onboarding easier with this remote employee onboarding checklist.
We know how much remote onboarding matters. After all, it sets the tone for a new team member’s long-term employee experience and influences their performance, satisfaction levels, and decision to stay.
Shockingly, only 12% of American workers told Gallup that their company did well at onboarding them. To make sure your organization’s remote employee onboarding process is future-proof, we have prepared a remote employee onboarding checklist that you can follow.
Have you defined clear objectives?
A good remote onboarding process mapping should always start with clearly defined objectives. Here are some things to check:
- Have you set specific onboarding goals for remote employees? Make sure to define performance expectations by outlining what success looks like after 30-60-90 days. Additionally, note key milestones a remote hire must achieve. This will help you track their progress.
- Are the objectives aligned with the company’s culture and organizational values? This is important for helping remote employees learn the organization’s core principles and how their role contributes to the bigger picture.
- Is the onboarding roadmap clear? Develop a plan with key activities, expected timelines, and necessary resources. Make sure to include any relevant stakeholders, such as IT professionals helping to set up equipment.
- Lastly, are you giving each remote hire a clear understanding of what to expect throughout their onboarding process?
Is the onboarding experience personalized?
One size doesn’t fit all – even when it comes to remote onboarding. That is precisely why many organizations are hyper-focused on tailoring the remote employee onboarding experience.
Customized personal onboarding plans consider a remote hire’s role, background, and often even their individual learning style.
Since remote employees can be location-independent, we also need to accommodate potential time zone differences by including on-demand, autonomous onboarding methods.
Some possibilities when it comes to tailoring the remote onboarding experience for employees can include:
- Chatbots with on-demand performance tips,
- Automated progress tracking and resource delivery,
- Digital employee handbooks,
- Task calendars guiding new team members on immediate next steps,
- Internal content libraries with role-specific training.
A customized remote onboarding process is simple when it’s delivered through a mobile-first employee experience platform that can segment remote hires, automate your process, and integrate with your HR stack.
Do the new remote employees have all the IT setup & access needed?
The remote onboarding process often includes equipping new hires with work-related equipment, hardware, and software. You probably won’t get hands-on here, but you play an integral role in ensuring things get done – right and on time.
Does your remote onboarding:
- Provide step-by-step IT setup guides?
- Explain how new hires can get reimburse for new office equipment?
- Include instructions on what tech tools and platforms are often used and how best to use them?
- Connect them with IT specialists who can troubleshoot problems?
Have you considered communication and engagement when creating the remote employee onboarding process?
Are there aspects of your remote onboarding process with a human touch?
Async communication methods like chat, email, and in-project commenting are essential for efficient distributed work and maintaining a good work-life balance (more on that below).
Even so, remote team members are in dire need of organizational social capital – which can only be developed when connections are intentionally facilitated.
For this reason, think about using video to get face-to-face with them. Hold virtual orientation sessions, open Q&A discussions, and regular check-ins. For even more assistance, you could add a few onboarding videos acquainting new hires with your tools, workflows, and culture before work begins. You can facilitate asynchronous communication through, for example, a mobile-first employee app.
Have you taken care of compliance and documentation requirements?
During a remote onboarding process, basic tasks like remote employee verification must be facilitated asynchronously and at scale. To streamline the legal onboarding process and ensure nothing slips, consider running it through an employee communication platform that integrates with your dedicated HR solution.
Onboarding is much easier with an automated intake process.
There’s no reason for you to spend time manually sending, receiving, or tracking employee documentation. An HR-focused employee onboarding app can take care of it for you.
Employee apps can help with other compliance tasks, like data privacy training. Data privacy training educates new team members on organizational policies and best practices for data protection, privacy, and cybersecurity.
It can be used to digitize and distribute a standard employee handbook. Or to have new team members sign a legal policy acknowledgment document agreeing to uphold company policies.
How about support and well-being benefits?
The first few days on the job challenge our mental health. We’re anxious, jittery, uncertain, adapting to new expectations, and experiencing high degrees of psychological discomfort.
This holds true even during effective employee onboarding processes.
Ease new team members through this transition and improve their long-term outcomes by offering a mix of well-being benefits, initiatives, and support.
Schedule some work-life balance activities, personal introductions, and team-building sessions. Inform employees about their support and well-being benefits, make them accessible, and encourage remote hires to use them.
Kalahari Resorts does this through a customized Speakap deployment, MyKalahari. Its employee app is loaded with resources for mental, physical, and even financial well-being. Team members can access information on-demand, engage in their preferred wellness activities, and see real-time event updates.
Digitize and automate your remote employee onboarding checklist
Let’s run through those items again. A solid remote employee onboarding checklist should include:
- Legal, verification, and compliance documentation,
- Software, hardware, and office set-up,
- Training materials,
- Video meetings and virtual communication introductions,
- Personal team introductions and bonding opportunities,
- Personalized onboarding requirements,
- Wellbeing support.
A summary is nice, but we did promise to help you out with a convenient employee onboarding checklist. It's waiting for you below - grab it, then tweak it to suit your specific goals and expectations.