How is Facebook ensuring the smoothest remote onboarding experience

Getting ready, hailing a cab, or starting the engines to head to the office has become history for most of us. But for many people who joined work during the pandemic, that never happened. Their office was at home, and didn’t experience the physical workspace environment.

Needless to say, that onboarding such freshers or even experienced candidates hasn’t been the most straightforward task. And honestly, it was a task none of us was prepared for, and it became a challenge. These are some of the things that you can do to ensure that you have the smoothest onboarding experience not just for candidates but for you as well.

Plan ahead, plan well.

The base of every execution is good; detailed planning and onboarding are no different. And with the current times, it has become even more important to focus on what you plan and how you plan it. According to a recent Workable survey, over 37% of respondents said they faced issues remotely onboarding.

The reason is not lack of effort but trouble figuring out what would work the best in the situation. It was new for most companies; no manual or crash course was available. The only way to figure out a smooth onboarding plan was to trace their steps backwards and start planning afresh. Break down the steps to fit the current situation and make it work. It’s time that requires a lot of unlearning before learning.

Twitter’s approach to better employer onboarding

Twitter, the social media platform that lets the world know what’s trending, is a trendsetter itself and has a 75-step plan to ensure the transition from ‘yes to desk’ is a smooth journey. All the recruiters at Twitter follow the program to the T, which has helped them deliver one of the best onboarding experiences. Apart from that, when new employees join, they aren’t just welcomed by words but by a welcome kit. This helps the fresh joinee feel at home and warms them up to their colleagues.

A 0-100 Roadmap

As soon as the pandemic hit the world, 62.6% of businesses were forced to go remote. However, most of them were unaware of how to deal with how to manage the existing team remotely, let alone hire and handle new employees. Every company devised its plans, but unfortunately, most companies found it difficult to make the employees feel connected to the company’s goal. It became difficult to track the progress and keep everyone looped in. Keeping a regular check on employees virtually was new territory, leading to delayed projects.

0-100 roadmap to focus on new joinees

Vistaprint decided to put the good old 0-100 day roadmap to use to ensure their projects don’t suffer delays. The 0-100 day roadmap focused on getting new joiners up to pace with goals and tasks pre-decided for the first 100 days of their employment. Apart from this, they extensively concentrate on how to virtually engage their employees using various activities to make them feel connected.

Their remote-first handbook gives ideas for virtual engagement and encourages 1:1 break time among the employees. These strategies have helped Vistaprint deliver a seamless onboarding experience and keep the dais open for ideas and suggestions from their employees.

Share the insights of the company.

Feeling disengaged and uninvolved is not new to the workplace and has existed since pre-COVID times. So how do you ensure that your new employees don’t feel left out in the current virtual setup? Well, the first and foremost thing to do is always to keep them notified about whatever is going on in the firm. It doesn’t matter if the employee is directly related to it; if it is significant for the firm, it is substantial for every single employee. 96% of job seekers say that it’s essential to have transparency in the workplace.

Candidate communication is the key

Google, a global company with over 100,000 employees, swears by keeping its employees looped in, and even when the pandemic hit, they swore by it. Google became even more rigorous with its communication with consistent blog and tweet updates from the senior management. This not only kept the employees informed but also showcased one of the best examples of how to tackle the pandemic.

Laszlo Bock, the former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, wrote “Work Rules! Insights From Inside Google”, educating recruiters on how Google’s onboarding process works using his own experiences.

Play the field, keep experimenting

Remember the first time when you started something new? Was it a hit the first time? It probably was, but is it the same even now, or has it improved? Success is guaranteed when you do something repeatedly, learn from the shortcomings, and aren’t scared of experimenting when it comes to recruitment; things aren’t that different. Remote onboarding isn’t something most companies have been unaware of. So the best way to figure out the ideal way to experiment. Make a plan, never set it in stone, and keep adding to it now and then.

Long term remote work culture

Facebook became one of the first companies to adopt long-term remote work and started preparing itself for the upcoming transition just two months into the pandemic. They announced the option of permanent work from home in June 2020, and to ensure everything goes smoothly, they even opened up a new position- Director of Remote.

Annie Dean assumed the position at the end of 2020 and is dedicated to stewarding this change and examining things that impact the employee experience, including tech tools, benefits, home office equipment, onboarding, L&D, and more. Facebook immediately jumped to making changes according to the new setup required.

We have, as the first step of engagement, calls with the leadership where they talk about the problem we are solving and the vision. Then we do team calls to meet them even before they join. We have specific onboarding calls where they meet their buddies assigned. So we have calls to understand the problems, our culture etc., to give a feel of our team.

Before joining, we also ensure that we have assigned a buddy and everything is in place; they help to understand the technologies and tools they should be equipped for.

Sarika SL

Lead -Talent acquisition at OkCredit

Getting onboard with remote onboarding can continue to feel like a challenge, but the best part is that it is here to stay, and you can continue to learn as you go about it. Don’t be shy about experimenting or completely revamping your onboarding process; there’s no defined method. See what others are doing, look into your previous approach, and develop a new plan. 

Remember, we all learn from our mistakes; since this is a new playground, there are no mistakes, just attempts and trials.