The purpose of this meeting is to help small company's managers get their remote new hires up to speed, ASAP.
Onboarding is a stressful process for both employers and employees due to the learning curve and uncertainty around the new role. And in the world of remote work, this challenge is amplified because of the lack of a physical office environment… you can’t quickly ask a nearby co-worker how to do something, observe the company culture, or organically socialize with co-workers. Onboarding is also often thought of as a journey, not something that happens in one meeting or even in one week - you show up to the office and gradually absorb more info from the environment and people for weeks and months. But in the world of remote work, organic exposure to new people and instances is much more limited, so their discovery and exposure must be intentionally initiated.
Remote work means an increased need for documentation
Onboarding and training issues are well known to kill new employee morale and performance with the employer often paying the price in lost productivity and in many cases employee turnover. So it's no wonder why the responsibility falls largely on the employer to proactively solve onboarding issues before they arise and set up the new employee for success by anticipating their needs. And in the shift to remote-first work, this responsibility is growing.
The learning curve for remote hires is steeper due to the inaccessibility of information
For HR and team managers onboarding solutions are not straight-forward, as new hires, managers and company resources are all constrained on time, attention-span and even trust. Documentation is an obvious asset, but it doesn’t work well on its own - who wants to read ten documents to try to figure out how things work at a new company? Heavy documentation is not digestible and needs to be contextualized and indexed so new hires can get info as needed - someone needs to explain it to new employees for it to stick.
Remote teams need more help building communication channels
And having an intro session with the manager and team is also a given, but aside from that sweet, awkward, informal meet and greet, employees often are distracted by more pressing matters to learn about Jim’s weekend golfing average. Getting to know you teammates is important no doubt, but getting useful info such as go-to contacts for certain subjects or logistics of getting their systems set up early on. Letting new hires fend for themselves by just dropping them into a crowd is much less effective in the remote-work world than a traditional office, because new hires find themselves constantly having simple, roadblocking questions that they need quick answers to. Instead of casually leaning over and asking a nearby coworker about something, you must type out questions to people whose availability is not clear or guaranteed, and wait for them to notice it and then type back… turning tiny momentary help into pestering, delayed transactions.
Zync can address these issues with a standardized, onboarding meeting template
One tool that helps HR and team managers to onboard people more efficiently is Zync’s Employee Orientation template. It offers a standardized way to walk your new hires through their first day, making sure they get introduced to exactly what you want them to see and in a given order with embedded, job-specific content - with the ability to discuss and clear up confusion on the spot.