The 4 C's of Remote Onboarding: A Modern HR Approach
Knowing so many labor law posters are sent to team members during onboarding, we’ve come up with a strategic framework that can help ensure a successful onboarding journey.
It involves 4 C’s that are critical to a healthy remote workplace in general—Culture, Communication, Collaboration and Coordination. Focusing on these can be the foundation for a thriving, high-performing, team-oriented team.
Here’s a glimpse at each of these tenets.
Culture
The foundation of any healthy team is Culture. This is true whether you are virtual, hybrid, or totally on-site.
Culture is built on a company’s core values and shared belief system. As an HR professional, you’re tasked with making sure your organization is clear on your purpose and principles—since that’s what’s the foundation of your unsaid beliefs and norms.
Your company needs to celebrate and live by its purpose—and you don’t want to neglect that with anyone new joining your team. That purpose has to be for an existence bigger than just work itself.
It can’t just be the founder or CEO who celebrates this vision and purpose; make sure the company purpose is shared and lived out by all team members.
Culture can be hard to define, but the following questions can help you to shed light on your current culture with new hires:
What are a few of the top, common beliefs across employees? How can those be shared with a new hire so they know these common beliefs (and resulting behaviors)? These are often initially set by a founder, but can change over time.
What do we all stand for and believe in? How does the business advance that cause? How can the new hire learn more?
How do we respond to clients typically? What’s the “norm” for communicating with them? How can a new hire see this modeled out?
What’s the norm for communicating with each other? What are any stories you have related to this that can be shared with the new hire as examples?
What’s our priority as a company? What’s the new hire’s priorities as it relates to that?
What do people consider a “win” or positive outcome?
How do we support our own people, partners, clients, and community? How can the new hire see that in-action?
How does information flow within our company?
As a reminder, this all starts before someone is hired. That’s why we recruit and hire people who are truly energized and inspired by Edoc’s purpose. If there’s any doubt people aren’t aligned with your company purpose and core values, don’t rush to hire them. In fact, be sure not to hire them.
If you have current employees who aren’t aligned with these beliefs, help them find another opportunity.
This likeminded team is going to be the glue that unites your remote team, so be as intentional as possible when looking for new candidates and hiring. People will either add to your culture, positively, or they will take away from it.
Remember that the criteria for “great work” may change with remote work, depending on your company culture today. If it matters when people clock in or how much time it takes to get tasks done in your company today, you may have to revisit these expectations with remote workers. After all, “great work” for remote teams is not dependent on a certain amount of time worked each day or when you clock in and out.
If you are a fully remote team, as an HR leader, you can recognize the culture where the new hire came from. Have they worked remotely before? Or were they on a team that was partially remote? For some new hires, this idea may be a mindset shift, but it’s an extra edge you can create for your business.
Communication
The second critical component of any healthy remote culture is Communication, and so you need to focus on communication when it comes to your new hire. We inherently know communication is critical in any business, but take a step back as an HR leader, and think about communication in another light.
Communication is ultimately about trust.
So how do you build trust and effectively communicate with a new hire from day one?
Especially with new hires, be sure to define—and then make—proactive communication the norm within your company and with clients, too. In fact, at Edoc, always default to being proactive when it comes to communication with clients and with each other.
Be sure to call or get back in touch with people (within the company and outside) in a timely manner. People, including partners, may have the misconception you are away, or just not as available when you are working virtually. Work against this misconception by being as responsive as you can be.
We can’t emphasize this one enough: At first, that may feel like it’s over-communicating, but I can tell you, in a remote environment, you can rarely over-communicate! Use different formats to get your message across, too. You can never underestimate the value of communicating a message in different formats.
People absorb information in different ways, after all. The trust will build naturally from there. For Edoc’s version of a “virtual water cooler,” we use Slack, where we’re able to create a sense of camaraderie, connection, and community. As a real-time chatroom, Slack allows us to send and update others on non-work related topics that we enjoy talking about with each other. Out of town for a week? No problem, because you can easily catch up in all Slack’s channels. Every company is going to have its norms and desired way of communicating, so find the tools that best support how you work and enjoy communicating.
Next, be sure you work on listening. We can all work to improve our ability to actively listen, and the power of active listening is only heightened in a remote environment. It may even take a course or investment to grow your listening skills so you can truly hear feedback from a new hire.
Look to suspend judgement as someone as talks to you; in other words, as difficult as it may be, we try not to plan what we’re going to say as they talk since that takes away from our ability to fully listen. Allow them to finish and try not to interrupt (an area I can certainly work on.) Another key point we aim for: repeat back what someone has said to you, in your words, to show your understanding. That kind of reflection may sound something like: “So what I’m hearing you say is…”
Then, that person you’re talking to has the opportunity to continue to explain themselves or they can add clarity if you didn’t get their message or issue right. Paraphrasing and repeating what you’re hearing back to someone is an empowering way you can help people and teams, together, to arrive at better solutions.
Collaboration
We believe thinking about collaboration in a remote setup first and foremost requires forward-thinking leadership. Be open minded about the potential for remote work.
If you feel people have to work 9-5, at a desk you can see, at all times—remote work is going to be an uphill battle for you, and your new hire is going to sense the distrust.
Here’s another example of being mindful about collaboration: be sure you have overlap across time zones. It sounds simple, but it’s essential for seamless collaboration to happen. Yes, you want to encourage people the ability to have freedom, but efficiency, timeliness, and having an overlap of hours is just going to be critical for getting work done.
Depending on your current norms and culture, get clear on those expectations. Is it okay to work any hours but have overlap? Do you need specific times of overlap to best meet client needs? Or what should the new hire expect? Don’t assume they know!
You likely also already have a video conferencing tool for meetings. But a major mistake we see people making is NOT utilizing video on remote teams; that’s why at Edoc, our norm for the majority of meetings (outside of stand-up meetings) is that we have our cameras “on”.
Another common practice for companies today is to ask that participants not work on other activities during the meeting. Yes, not all the non-verbals can be picked up on in a remote setting, but the video itself will go a long way in meeting engagement. We can’t emphasize that one enough. Last, don’t be afraid to screen share or to use a tool that mimics a whiteboard.
Think of it this way: you want to treat all your meetings with the same level of respect you would with an in-person, face-to-face meeting, and the new hire needs to recognize that. That means coming prepared to contribute, having an objective for every meeting (not the same as an agenda), reducing distractions when possible, and following up when necessary post-meeting. As an HR leader, you can help to set this “norm” for your team.
Coordination
One of the best way to improve coordination is to know more about how others you work with tend to operate; knowing this can ultimately help you work better, together.
This can be accomplished in a number of ways so you can understand how a new hire prefers to work, and also that the new hire knows your preferred style/tendencies when it comes to working. How we do it: we learn more about our own and others’ “team role” tendency, based on the Belbin Team Inventory, an analysis of how people tend to behave in a team environment.
The real beauty in any tool you use to learn about your preferred style of operating is finding some common language and learning more about your colleagues. Whatever tool or assessment you may use, it’s not about putting people in a box, it’s about self-awareness for better learning of how we tend to operate.
Another example of improving coordination in a virtual setting during onboarding is how you maintain and send out your up-to-date labor law posters, which is essential for compliance and transparency. With ePoster, a digital solution, your remote team members can easily access all the necessary federal and state labor law posters from anywhere. This platform integrates seamlessly with your existing tools, providing instant updates and notifications whenever there are changes, ensuring your team is always informed and compliant.
By making this information readily accessible, you not only simplify compliance but also enhance coordination across teams, keeping everyone aligned and aware of key regulations—no matter where they choose to work.
Don’t Forget….
As an HR professional, don’t forget why people love the flexibility that comes with hybrid work or remote work.
What do others report as the benefits of remote work?
—2,500 people answered their question:
Flexible schedule
Working from any location
Time with family
Working from home
All in all, it’s rewarding to see and hear how so many companies today are valuing the health and well-being of their workers by offering them the ability to own their own time. Part of the idea of remote work is inherently about giving team members more flexibility—and, not to be forgotten—more trust in getting their work done to the best of their ability. At the same time, designing an effective onboarding for a new hire takes a lot of intentional work and proactivity, as we’ve described here.
As you incorporate more virtual work into your business, don’t forget that idea.