Remote Onboarding- Tips to amalgamate better in the team

Professionals across the globe who have joined new companies in 2020 and onwards have one thing in common about their experience i.e. remote onboarding. While the year has gone but the remote onboarding is here to stay as a new norm.

Sure, remote onboarding exists. Employees can meet their colleagues over Teams/Zoom and have shared drive links to the process documents, files etc. It takes much beyond the how’s of the job to get one engaged in an organization.

The first day of my remote job at LSEG was the usual- remote document verification, attending all the things and logging in. But, the second day arrived, I had no idea what to do. Now, I was sitting at my kitchen table, feeling more unsure than I had since the first day of my very first paying job. Weird thoughts crept in — Do I need to tell someone if I’m going for a run? Should I ask permission before I take a break to make lunch or manage toddler tantrums — is that cool? And why am I being so paranoid, anyway?

I eventually settled in, and in retrospect, I can laugh at my second-day freak-out. The shift from an in-house job to remote work is quite frankly, pretty weird, and onboarding a new remote employee requires a different, not-always-obvious approach. There’s a lot of room for mistakes, misunderstandings, and existential crises. Personally for me the first 90 days of my job (catalyst loop) at a new organization are important. I strongly believe they set the foundation of one’s journey in the company right from building rapport with team members, stakeholders to understanding work culture and how meetings are conducted. Summarising my top three tips to navigate the all remote workplace.

1. Unlearn and Relearn — Be patient, it’s natural to have the new employee anxiety. Times are unprecedented and new ways of working are evolving coupled with home-schooling / care responsibilities during the pandemic at home. You might not deliver results of the same standards in the first 90 days as opposed to the pre-Covid era. The how’s of the job may become overwhelming during siloed ramp up thus impacting productivity. Simply try to find out overlap in must do tasks and training. The activities or tasks might be straightforward but will give you an opportunity to learn about the business and the processes. Be ready to stumble upon, it’s a sign of unlearning. As long as you learn quickly, failure is great.

Pro-Tip: Investing time to create a buddy informally within the same hierarchy hugely helps to navigate the team dynamics.

2. How- I- work document — The uncertainty reduction theory of organization socialisation focuses any individual would want to decrease their unfamiliarity with others to predict their behaviours and an important part of relationship development. Quite common in leadership, generally referred as “User Manual”. It’s a must for business leaders who manage a team of leaders to have better communication between the two. So what if you aren’t part of C-Suite and must have a user manual, go ahead create your How-I-work document and discuss it with peers/manager. This might anchor the discussion with your manager to understand communication preferences and what traits they value and table on early any issues that might be developing.

Pro-Tip: If you think the above document might be bold in your workplace, practice using “Highlight/Progress/Me” to share weekly updates with relevant folks to let them know what you are up to. Use collaborative tools if available instead of emails to have all of them organized at one place.

3. Communicate razor sharp — Working in an office, sitting next to your colleagues makes it so easier to get tacit knowledge, hacks of certain tools etc over coffee, breaks or in lifts sometimes by asking questions/casual chats. Whereas such instances just don’t happen in remote working and one has to structure questions to ask over chats/emails depending upon the prevailing culture of the company. An important point here is everybody is pressed for time and juggling priorities amidst the pandemic. So as a new hire you don’t want to load the existing team members with umpteen questions emphasizing the need to communicate crisply.

Pro Tip: Go ahead and organise a weekly catch up with your manager/stakeholders right from the start to understand business priorities and feedback about ways of working (direct and indirect sourced from peers).

And if you’ve team members who have remotely joined, it’s absolutely critical to check in with the new hire and keep talking on a regular schedule at least for the first month. Ask them questions about how their schedule is, workload, how did the meeting go instead of simply asking how are you doing? If you feel you’re bugging them little too much, you’re doing it right.

Finally, experiment, over communicate, and iterate from there. I hope the learnings will help you to amalgamate better in the team. Feel free to share your tips or questions in the comments.