Building Culture Through Onboarding
The global pandemic has moved many corporate functions to fully remote, at least temporarily, including onboarding. Even during COVID-19 lockdowns, companies still need to engage in hiring and onboarding new employees. Some organizations are choosing to extend the remote experiment to their new way of doing business, with many organizations moving to 100% remote work. Like many other business processes, it is necessary to adjust the onboarding process to ensure remote employees’ success. There are no office visits, there is no shadowing of team members, and there are no hallway meetings or corporate events for employees to experience the company culture. There is just a lot of video conferencing.
What does that mean for instilling company culture?
Every organization, company, and team has its unique personality and ambiance — made up of tangible and intangible attributes — this is what we mean when we say “culture.” Parker and Nielsen, in their review of compliance management programs, explain that organizational culture can refer to “shared values and beliefs, myths, interpretations and meanings within an organization, and actions and behaviors, including customs, practices, norms, rituals, and implementation of control systems” ( Schein 2010 ).
Onboarding is more than signing up for benefits, watching a company overview video, and completing all those wonderful HR forms. Onboarding is more than a set of tasks in one day. Onboarding should go beyond familiarizing and focus on integrating a new employee into the company; it should also foster connection and culture during those first few tenuous months.
According to research from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM):
69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new-hire productivity.
54% of companies with onboarding programs reported higher employee engagement.
Ensuring the feel of the company culture translates can be difficult in a new remote work world. Where can some adjustments be made to the existing onboarding process to ensure new employees understand and integrate into the company culture?
Onboard Remotely without Sacrificing Culture
Onboarding starts BEFORE the first day, and so should the candidates experience of the company culture. It permeates through every company action, and new employees are evaluating whether the behaviors and words match from the moment they sign the offer letter — if not before. Demonstrate your company culture with a welcome that speaks to your company values and beliefs.
Welcome Packages
Send a welcome package that includes something that demonstrates your company culture. Easy option, company swag that has the company values on it. More engaged option, send them a book that might relate to a company value or the overall culture — giving them some reading material in those two weeks before the start date.
Provide Company History
Provide a document, presentation, or video that provides the company’s history and a bit about the culture. Easy option. A presentation deck to introduce the company and company values more formally to them. More engaged choice, a great video about the company history and culture, including videos from various employees about their experience working at the company. Something readily shared with the information packet the company will likely be sending with paperwork and corporate technology access information.
Relationships Drive Culture
Remember Relationships Drive Culture. Company cultures are most readily experienced, shared, and passed on through company relationships. Connecting new employees with people that can support and guide them in a remote environment is critical.
- Get that Buddy Program Remote-Friendly. Some organizations already have the New Hire Buddy programs in place. Now is a great time to adjust the process for remote-friendly. Ensure the Buddy knows how to be the right kind of support in this new remote workspace through updated internal training.
- Make Meeting the Team Remote-Friendly. Thinking a zoom meeting with the new employee and 14 tiny video boxes is a great way to introduce everyone. Think again. Gone are the days of grabbing a cup of coffee with the new hire, having them meet with the team for lunch in their first few days or week, or introducing new employees to others in the organization while walking the office halls. Those connections and relationships are still just as meaningful (maybe more so) when employees are remote, and they still need those in the know to guide them to the people they should “meet.” Here are some quick tips:
- Consider incorporating a series of short one-on-one to help the new hire meet the team.
- Create a list of who the new employee should meet in their first 30 to 60 days and why. Some people are on the list because they do a similar job, they have done the same or similar work in the past, maybe another Newbie, or tenured and well informed.
- Have current employees write a quick introduction of themselves to be shared with new employees. These can be reused over time, and meeting strangers one on one with no context can be challenging.
- Draft a list of potential questions new employees may want to consider asking. Creating this question list can guide the employee to understand how “we engage at this company,” for example, does your company encourage asking individuals their preferred pronouns? Put it on the question list! Some can be work-related, and some should be work-appropriate fun. The context and intros will help the new employee choose which questions they might ask during the one-on-one.
- Encourage the new employee to ask current employees, “Whom else do you recommend I meet?”
Communication is Key
Communication, both verbal and written, will need adjustments. When working in collocated spaces, communication could occur organically, not always deliberate and planned. When collocated, communications and training between employees could occur during job shadowing or by rolling a desk chair over and asking for a walkthrough or demo. All-hands meetings may have been held in the main conference room, and employees unable to attend heard bits and pieces over the water cooler the next day. In a remote workplace, communication has to be more deliberate, bi-directional, asynchronous, and frequent. The “How We Do Things” will have to be more explicit in a remote organization to aid new employees’ learning.
Onboarding Matters
The Onboarding process has a significant impact on new employee success. The Human Capital Institute has found that companies invested in improving the onboarding experience are more likely to see substantial benefits, such as increased engagement levels, decreased time to proficiency, and reduced turnover .
Successful onboarding takes careful and deliberate planning that should consider the new hire needs out as far as 60, 90, or even 180 days. As your workplace shifts to be fully remote or a hybrid, whether temporarily or permanently, take time to review and adapt the onboarding process. It is the first chance to ensure that all new employees are prepared to enhance your teams and add value to your business in alignment with the organization’s values and culture.
About the Author
Originally published at https://www.wyld.work on May 25, 2022.
