At the moment, the entire U.S. workforce is going through a period of time that’s being called “The Great Resignation.” More than half of all working Americans are reportedly looking for new jobs right now.
As a result of this, your company is probably going to be saying goodbye to some of your current employees and saying hello to new ones soon. This will mean going through the onboarding process with a whole bunch of new people.
In the past, onboarding this many people would have been a nightmare. But virtual onboarding has made it easier than ever before for companies to onboard new employees in a hurry.
If your company isn’t onboarding virtually yet, you should aim to change that ASAP. You should also pick up on some of the virtual onboarding best practices to make things go smoothly from the start.
We’ve created a virtual onboarding guide to help you put together and improve your virtual onboarding process. Check it out below.
Begin by Investing in the Necessary Virtual Onboarding Software
If you’re planning on using virtual onboarding for new employees from now on, it’s not something you’ll be able to do overnight. You’ll need to invest in the proper virtual onboarding software to get things underway.
There are lots of companies that have started to create virtual onboarding software these days. But few are better at it than WorkBright. WorkBright I-9 verification software will work wonders for your company when it comes to virtual onboarding.
It’ll obviously be impossible to do virtual onboarding without the necessary software. So you should kick off your virtual onboarding efforts by investing in it.
Gather the Appropriate Information From New Employees
Once you have the right software in your possession, you can begin to use virtual onboarding to your advantage. But to do it, you will need to get into the habit of gathering the appropriate information from your company’s new employees.
You’ll need to obtain things like:
- Their full names
- Their addresses
- Their positions
- Their phone numbers
- Their email addresses
By doing this, you’ll be able to create the right forms for them to fill out prior to working for your company. You should set up a system that calls for your hiring managers to send you the info for new employees as soon as they’re brought on board.
Send New Employees the Forms They’ll Need to Fill Out Virtually
When you get all the appropriate info for new employees, you can put together a packet filled with forms for them with your virtual onboarding software. You can then send it in their direction and inform them of what they’ll need to do to fill everything out.
As long as you’ve invested in high-quality virtual onboarding software, filling out these forms should be simple enough. But if you suspect that there is going to be any confusion at all among new employees, you should create a list of instructions for them and include it with the forms.
Your new employees will be able to fill out these forms a week or two before their first official day with your company. It’ll ensure that they don’t have to get stuck in your office filling out these forms when they start.
Provide New Employees With Deadlines for Sending Forms Back
The only good thing about having new employees fill out forms on their first days at work is that there won’t be any getting around it for them. They’ll be asked to sit down and do it so that it gets done.
The same can’t always be said when you rely on virtual onboarding for new employees. Some new employees will have their forms back to you within an hour. But others will forget all about their forms until the 11th hour, and sometimes they’ll even forget to do them altogether.
You can prevent this from happening by giving your new employees strict deadlines for the forms that you need. You can also encourage them to call you right away if they have problems with your virtual onboarding software.
Create Educational Training Videos for New Employees
You should supply new employees with more than just the forms that you need to be filled out as far as virtual onboarding is concerned. You should also supply them with at least some of the training that they’ll need to do their jobs once they start working for your company.
You can do this by creating educational training videos and sending them in their direction during the virtual onboarding process. You should instruct new employees to watch each of these videos and come up with some kind of test to prove that they did it.
This is a way better option than asking new employees to spend their first few days at work going through a training program. They’ll be able to hit the ground running when you have them start to train for their new jobs in advance.
Allow New Employees to “Meet” Your Staff Virtually
New job anxiety is a very real thing for many people. Their anxiety levels go through the roof during their first days on the job because of all the anticipation and nervousness that they feel.
It’s impossible to eliminate all of the nerves that come along with starting a new job. But you can help to make new job anxiety a little bit more manageable for your new employees through virtual onboarding.
More specifically, you can set up a time when your new employees will get to “meet” your current employees virtually. It’ll familiarize them with your staff and allow them to touch base with those that they’ll be reporting to.
Everyone will feel better about new employees starting at your company when they’ve already been introduced in a virtual sense.
Answer Any Questions Your New Employees Might Have
Your company’s new employees are going to have a million and one questions as they inch closer to their first days. It’ll fall on you to answer as many of these questions as you can.
You might begin to feel overwhelmed if you have new employees banging down your door all the time and asking you for help. But you’ll be able to manage this steady stream of questioning easier when you harness the power of virtual onboarding.
Virtual onboarding will let you answer a lot of the questions that your new employees might have right in your training documents. It’ll also give your new employees a chance to ask any questions that they might not be able to find answers to.
These questions might be as simple as “When can I take my lunch?” or as complex as “What would be the best health insurance plan for a family of seven?” But the point is that you can field these questions prior to a person’s first day versus trying to field all of them at once when they start working for your company.
Spend Time Focusing on Other Aspects of Your Job
When you’re in charge of onboarding new employees, it’s going to take up a nice chunk of your time. There will be new people starting almost every week in many cases, and you’ll be responsible for onboarding all of them. It can make it hard to handle the other aspects of your job!
This is where virtual onboarding will step in and help. Since you’ll be able to do most onboarding virtually, you can free up some of your time to focus on your other responsibilities. And you can do it without hurting your onboarding process at all.
It’s just one more reason to give virtual onboarding a try if you haven’t done it already. Within just a month or two, you’ll wonder why you ever tried to onboard new employees in any other way. You’ll also find that you can improve virtual onboarding over the months and years to make it even more effective for your company.
Virtual Onboarding Is the Way to Go for Many Companies
Why wait until your new employees report for their first days to start the onboarding process? With virtual onboarding, you can begin onboarding these employees right away so that they can get down to business on their first days.
The emergence of virtual onboarding software has changed the game for many HR professionals. It has made it possible for them to onboard employees without ever having to meet with them in person.
Would you like to get some information on other business products that your company should be using right now? Find it by poking through more of our blog articles.