An onboarding plan for distributed teams gives new hires immediate connection, engagement, and productivity from Day 1. With the global nature of organizations today, both the location of the individual and time matter less in terms of developing the team relationships, which increases the relevance and value of a structured digital onboarding process each year. Organizations using a written-down and a digitized process will realize great retention, improved performance, and cultural alignment.
A well-planned onboarding experience means the new team member can move beyond anxiety to contribute smoothly. The following outline describes a 10-step employee onboarding digital process that focuses on connection building and compliance strategies that support the distributed team.
The Importance of Structure for Remote Onboarding
Manual onboarding for distributed teams often consists of many pieces that are frequently disorganized, such as onboarding documentation, fragmented workflows, and unclear communication. New hires are left to wait days to receive onboarding tools, do not have clarity on expectations for key elements of their skill, and many of the contributions to team culture rely on chance.
Brandon Hall Group indicates that companies with a structured onboarding process can see a leap of 103% improvement in key metrics such as employee engagement and new hire retention. Statistics like these substantiate that the onboarding process is more than an HR task, whether you’re onboarding a new hire in person or virtually.
Technology-enabled onboarding is a strategic approach with an emphasis on engagement and long-term performance in the role. Here is a list of areas where the traditional onboarding process falls short.
- There is no centralized onboarding strategy or even a standard checklist in place.
- With multiple overlapping tools, the communication norms become vague.
- The lack of visibility of the onboarding process can adversely affect a new hire’s onboarding experience and performance.
- Compliance or verification strategies for remote employees are limited.
The significance of having a defined framework is clarity, purpose, confidence, and security with a way to access the information or let the person and tools develop in the way required.
The 10-Step Digital Onboarding Process for Virtual-First Teams
Below is a ten-step digital onboarding process to set your remote team up for success from Day 1 while alleviating the administrative burden of your HR team.
Step 1: Pre-Boarding Preparation
Today, onboarding no longer takes up a new hire’s entire first day of work. Instead, it is initiated well before the actual first day by distributing digital welcome kits and fulfilling all compliance requirements, bringing the employee up to speed as much as possible. This includes the distribution of devices, sharing account credentials, and permissions for access to items that are a part of setting up their workspace.
As distributed teams blur the boundaries of countries and cover an array of jurisdictions, compliance and identity verification are a key part of the remote onboarding process. A secure, automated KYC process enables organizations to validate user identity and stay compliant while eliminating manual intervention, human errors, and associated risks.
The benefits of the digital onboarding process help establish trust early in a new hire’s lifecycle, reducing the administrative burden of the HR team and improving the overall operational efficiency of the organization.
Step 2: Provision Access to Tools and Resources
Create a single dashboard or onboarding website for employees to see all login details, the resources available to them, and what stage they are in with onboarding. Centralizing access will prevent confusion for new employees and will minimize wait time to access items needed for onboarding. With an onboarding checklist, employees will be required to check their dashboard daily until all their account creation is complete.
Step 3: Set Up a Zero-Trust Security Framework
As remote employees access corporate networks from generally untrusted home environments, cybersecurity should be prioritized. Implement a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) based on the always verify, never trust principle. This requires Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provisioning upon device enrollment and compliance to Least Privilege Access (LPA).
For example, upon joining, employees are usually prompted to set up an authenticator app (e.g., Microsoft or Google Authenticator) when logging in for the first time, potentially using a Temporary Access Pass (TAP). Alignment and automated workflows will be critical for HR and IT working together to lessen human error and ensure compliance overall.
Step 4: Establish a Single Source of Truth
New remote employees require a clear, definitive centralized documentation for procedures, policies, and contacts. The Remote Employee Handbook is essential. The handbook consists of important information such as working hours, timesheet procedures, and technology usage.
Having a site or shared drive formatted as an organized Company Wiki or knowledge base helps new employees to self-serve access to organizational charts, escalation paths, and basic information about how to do their jobs (which is particularly helpful for distributed teams).
Step 5: Share the Cultural and Communication Norms
With a distributed workforce that includes Virtual Assistants and other employees who work in tandem with executives, clear and consistent communication is critical. Introduce the mission, values of the organization, and communication norms within the first few days or the first week. Document how and when to use communication modes, i.e., chat, email, asynchronous updates, and what the expected timeframe for communicating is.
Doing this in the onboarding process minimizes the fear and anxiety for blending in and exposes them to the organizational norms to help transition in this first transition point.
Stage 6: Deliver Compliance and Security Training
In a remote context, awareness of regulations is essential. Accountability training should be structured around data confidentiality, cybersecurity, and organizational compliance processes. Just like in in-person settings, consider integrating identity and document verification on an interface such as Ondato to mitigate the risks associated with working across borders.
Stage 7: Prevent Isolation with a Buddy System
To conceptually ward off the hazards of remote isolation, adopt a dedicated onboarding buddy or mentor program. An onboarding buddy is an employee, preferably with experience, who can guide the employee through cultural norms, answer honest questions, and assist in an informal capacity without being linked to the organizational hierarchy.
Check-ins are recommended to occur regularly and at least once a week during the first month, preferably visually via video conferencing.
Step 8: Set Up Feedback Loops
Establish a transparent feedback loop to identify effective engagement and monitor progress. Schedule periodic virtual check-ins with managers to provide continued support, as well as to solicit input from new hires and managers at strategic points throughout the onboarding process (e.g., 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days). Feedback from new hires provides the organization an opportunity to enhance its approach and shows a commitment to delivering a good experience.
Step 9: Create Quick Win Opportunities
Encourage each new hire to complete a deliverable, ideally real work, in the first two weeks after onboarding, whether that be contributing to a project, leading a meeting, or delivering a minor feature. Build opportunities for small wins right away, building momentum and confidence in your new remote hire.
Step 10: Measure and Iterate Regularly
To validate your investment in digital onboarding, you should continuously track critical measures and metrics that focus on both efficiency and experience. Some key KPIs to measure are:
- Time-to-Productivity (T2P): The amount of time it takes a new hire to be fully productive and add value to their role. Generally, the goal is to achieve full productivity performance standards in 8–10 months.
- New Hire Retention Rate: This KPI provides a measure of successful cultural-fit integration and is determined, again typically, within the first year of employment.
- Training Completion Rate: This KPI indicates whether the new hire has achieved the baseline knowledge for the role, particularly in terms of security and compliance.
- Onboarding Satisfaction: This KPI is based on the tracked pulse surveys regarding the onboarding experience itself, whether or not a supportive experience has been provided.
Measuring these specific data points allows you to see where people are engaging in the process or where they are disengaging and how it affects their productivity levels. Making measuring a key point in your onboarding ecosystem opens opportunities for continuous improvement and is especially useful for engaging remote and hybrid distributed teams.
The Need for an Automated Digital Onboarding Process
Digital onboarding tools streamline workflows, automate repetitive processes, and provide a consistent format for every stage of onboarding. Digital onboarding makes automated identity verification a part of the secure and compliant onboarding flow.
Implementing an automated process for remote employee onboarding can help eliminate friction, build confidence, and allow your HR and recruiting teams to focus on new hires' experiences while digital onboarding solutions handle the administrative burden.
Conclusion
A purposeful digital onboarding experience takes a distributed workforce experience from disconnected to connected. Meaningful steps, standard communication, and secure automation eliminate ambiguity and build confidence in new team members. Every stage of the onboarding process, from collecting documents to introducing your culture, builds confidence and connection for new hires.
Modern organizations can ensure the onboarding experience is efficient without sacrificing compliance or scalability by investing in strong digital platforms. The payoff with this purpose-built onboarding process will be a workforce that feels supported, connected, and able to contribute on day one.
