Compared to being onboarded in the office, is onboarding remotely more effective, less effective or equally effective? Why?
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It’s certainly less effective and more challenging. Now, during Covid, there was not much options.
Now that we are back in office, I find it beneficial if the onboarding cannot be done in person (for remote employees) to bring them to the office for at least a week to meet with their team, build a relationship and do some training. This has been very effective.
More effective, more convenient. Touchless Just-In-Time provisioning allows hardware to be shipped directly to remote users, not requiring a visit to the office. Video conferencing has become the norm and the use of applications like Teams or Slack allows everyone to stay connected.
In my opinion, person to person still remains the best way to interactively exchange information, or brainstorm - however tools like Mural allow better whiteboarding experiences, with simultaneous updates for users. Person to person, face to face interaction with your manager or half day new employee onboarding sessions remain the best way to imbue focus and culture than just reading the company employee manual cannot hope to match.
There are pros and cons to both in my opinion. Remote onboarding gives more flexibility - it readily facilitates the onboarding of persons who do not live in the vicinity of the office thus expanding geographical reach. It also facilitates flexible timing. I find you are able to virtually meet more persons in a shorter space of time, so for a large team you will "meet" everyone a bit more quickly. However, it does not support building strong relationships as readily as in-person interactions. It takes much longer to feel like you "belong" and to become part of the fabric of the organization which is important to really fostering engagement. Remote onboarding gives some short-term gains that may result in medium-to-long term pains.
When it comes specifically to the onboarding post-pandemic, the process is actually being accelerated. Due to the extended virtual working arrangements, the level of investment in digital content for thinks like company policies, procedures, welcome messages from senior leadership, benefits overviews, etc. increased overall. This allows onboarding associates to review these materials at their own pace. The amount of time spent in “live” (virtual) meetings can reduced and be focused on areas requiring discussion, Q&A, review of various paperwork and enrollments, and so on. With the amount of fully remote roles increasing across industries, companies must be prepared to deliver an onboarding process which is consistent with the overall remote working experience.
The process of completing required paperwork while onboarding remotely can be more flexible. However, it's sometimes difficult to build relationships or meet other members of your team if you're the remote worker. For small businesses without mature remote onboarding processes it might all feel very ad hoc, particularly for the new hire. I agree that the work relationships can still be successfully built remotely, but it takes time.