It’s 10:30 a.m. on a Monday when Bryan Boscia joins his first customer support
Here’s the catch:
These aren’t in-person discussions. They are not taking place in a conference room or at a coffee shop. In fact, none of the meeting participants live in the same city, let alone work in the same office.
Instead, they’re communicating through videoconferencing. It’s part of the onboarding process we use at Formstack to help new remote team members connect with colleagues.
“Having different people reach out to the new hire helps remote employees feel like they are a part of something large, just as you would at an organization that is 100% in the office,” Boscia once told me. Bryan has been at our company for nearly a year and now plays a key role in helping other “remoties” make the transition from traditional office settings.
By now, you’ve likely heard the stats: Employees are more alert, perform better and save companies money when they work remotely. But as organizations continue to embrace this new model, there is one critical component that has the potential to ruin a good thing when it’s rushed or overlooked: How to successfully onboard a remote team member.
The pace at which a new out-of-office employee is assimilated into day-to-day workflows can make or break the remote relationship. Looking at some startups that are succeeding at remote work, a few key elements surface.
Set expectations from day one
By nature, many of the people drawn to remote arrangements are self-sufficient and remarkably hard working. In one study, researchers found that remote workers are almost twice as likely to work beyond 40 hours a week than their in-office counterparts.
One explanation for this tendency toward over achievement is visibility. Remote employees may feel a need to prove they’re working just as hard, if not harder, than their on-site colleagues. While this may seem like a non-issue, problems can arise when these individuals start to feel burned out, undervalued or unappreciated in their attempts to counteract the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality that’s still prevalent in some office cultures.
You can prevent this from happening by setting schedules and developing routines for new hires from the outset.
When we initially started asking new remote employees what hours they preferred, it was to help create accountability and ensure some overlap between time zones. Eventually, we came to realize that these schedules set the tone for so much more. When remote workers know what’s expected from a timing perspective, they are more inclined to give themselves room to recharge and engage in meaningful ways.
In our onboarding handbook for remote employees, we encourage new hires to devote their most productive hours to work and use other time to do what makes them happy—whether that’s chatting with coworkers, volunteering in their communities or meeting friends for lunch.
Invest in a support system
While the cost savings of remote work arrangements can be appealing, there are other considerations that come with price tags—like combating cabin fever and the need for advanced technology to keep teams connected.
Teams that succeed with remote work weave these costs into specialized support systems. At Formstack, for example, all remote employees receive a monthly allowance to use for coworking space rentals, home office equipment or other tools and technologies they need to be effective from afar.
“When you’re not in the same office, you can’t walk down the hall and start a conversation, so you have to be really proactive when it comes to communicating day-to-day needs,” explains Adam Ferber, director of marketing at Chargify.
Adam would know. Chargify decided to go 100% remote last year to save on rent at a rarely-used office. The budgetary savings went right back into expanding and supporting the company’s remote workforce. New hires are equipped with the tools and technology needed to work wherever they feel most comfortable—whether it’s at a home office, coffee shop or coworking space—and are encouraged to be open and communicative from day one.
“If you have to choose between being annoying and not being transparent, be annoying,” is the advice from Chargify’s Brazil-based Software Developer Marcelo DePolli.
Don’t underestimate the power of online checkins, standup meetings, and hangouts to help new remote employees feel comfortable enough to do this. Tools like Zoom,
Foster a digital culture of camaraderie
Numerous studies (such as this one and this one) have shown how something as simple as chatting over coffee or hitting up a happy hour can have a tremendous impact on overall job satisfaction and performance.
Unfortunately, a new employee will have a tougher time forging friendships and building bonds without the convenience of break rooms and corner pubs. Even the best hire may perform below expectations if that person feels disconnected.
Consider what happened to software developer Michael Mattax. One of his previous employers decided to experiment with remote work but had no process for connecting out-of-office projects to on-site collaborations. Within six months, Mattax felt so isolated and out of the day-to-day loop that he quit.
By creating online opportunities to bond, you can infuse culture right into your onboarding process. The more opportunities a new employee has to visibly engage, the sooner she can collaborate as a truly integrated team member.
One of the designers on my team has reported that “keeping communication very frequent and detailed from the get-go is highly important.”
At Fog Creek Software, where 60% of team members work remotely, a monthly online meeting called Town Hall is used as an outlet to discuss feelings and problems as well as upcoming events and company-wide changes.
“We also have weekly random chats with coworkers, arranged by an open-source tool we wrote called CoffeeTime,” said senior technical staff member Jacob Krall.
This might seem tricky for companies that still have a significant local presence, but you’d be surprised at how quickly entire teams adapt to documenting dynamics in an online environment. Often, when one person has to video conference into a meeting everyone else will do the same—even the people working at the office that day. And while a new remote employee won’t be privy to conversations that happen organically at the office, online chat tools make it easy to document those discussions as well.
When you onboard a remote team member, you’re not just laying a foundation for engagement and trust. You’re also setting the stage for a career’s worth of productivity and achievement. Experiment and find out what works best for your own remote team members’ unique needs.
