Remote onboarding: How to virtually onboard employees in 5 simple steps

Picture this: eager, remote new hires are met with an onslaught of dense, text-heavy onboarding materials on their first day — with little to no human interaction.

Hardly a warm welcome, but not an unusual one in today’s remote onboarding environment.

The stakes are high. The impact of a subpar onboarding experience can echo far beyond the first few weeks. Studies show that employees who don’t have a positive new hire experience are twice as likely to look for a new job.

So how do you create a remote onboarding program that welcomes, engages, and retains new employees? We’ve got you covered with this comprehensive guide to onboarding remote employees, including a five-step action plan and virtual onboarding best practices to help new teammates hit the ground running.

What is remote onboarding?

Remote onboarding involved introducing a new hire to your company culture, team, and tools needed to do their job. A complete onboarding program helps new folks understand their role, the company, and the people they’ll be working with.

Ideally, onboarding involves showing a new member around the office, taking them out for lunch, and lots of handshakes. With remote onboarding, however, all of this is done virtually using video conferencing, videos, interactive exercises, and text resources.

In an episode of Vimeo’s Master Class series, we discussed the ins and outs of onboarding with video. Check out a snippet below:

How to onboard remote employees

Explore our five-step action plan for onboarding new remote employees:

1. Virtual onboarding pre-work

Eighty-three percent of high-performing companies kickstart their onboarding process before an employee’s first day. They clearly understand the importance of a good start. Pre-work ensures everything goes according to schedule. So get to work with the following steps:

• Get all the hardware, manuals, and employee handbooks sent to the new hire before their start date. Alternatively, transfer a hardware shopping budget to them, giving a deadline for when they should have their desk ready.
• Ask the IT team to help with the setup of the new hardware. Remotely installing VPNs and security software are all tasks for this step.
• Send over some company swag. Branded mugs, stickers, T-shirts, and socks, among other items, make new hires feel a part of your team. 
• Introduce company communication tools and set up the newcomer’s accounts.  
• Ask for the new person’s information, such as their previous job, hobbies, and more. Pass it along to the team so they can welcome them.

Speed up the paperwork process by getting the new hire to fill and sign documents digitally using secure eSignature tools like DocuSign.

2. Remote orientation for new employees

Orientation involves introducing the employee to their new team members. You, as their human resources point of contact, their hiring manager (or the direct manager they’ll report to), and the CEO are three faces a new hire should meet on day one.

If the new member hasn’t already met these folks during their hiring interviews, it’s best you do an intro video call. Then leave them to have a one-on-one meeting with the key members.

Keep introductory calls light and non-work related while discussing clear expectations for the role, establishing the work process, and defining short- and long-term goals on the side.

3. Set up meetings with the people they’ll work with closely

Start by introducing the new person in your company Slack. You can do this yourself, or a dedicated person can take on the job.  

Using information about the new face that you shared with the rest of the team in step one, everyone can personalize their welcome message.

Next, set up meetings for the new hire with their team members to help them become acquainted. Here at Vimeo, we schedule and mark the newcomer’s first-week intro calls on their Google Calendar to minimize confusion.

4. Host getting-to-know-the-business onboarding and training sessions

Since onboarding remote workers involves familiarizing them with your business and its offering, you need to work out the training sessions they’ll need to take.

As part of our remote onboarding, we have the following training sessions for all new Vimeans within their first month. Feel free to borrow these session ideas for onboarding new employees:

👉 New hire orientation and Trust and Safety Chat that gives an overview of Vimeo’s mission, vision, and value and details who is who at the company

👉 New hire orientation and U.S. benefits, which covers the benefits and enrollment for U.S. employees

👉 Product session that explains and trains about our product offerings

👉 Strategy session, which is an in-depth dive into Vimeo’s consumer expectations, strategy, goals, and positioning

👉 Security session that introduces new Vimeans to our security regulations

5. Give them a small task to get them into a work zone

Once all the onboarding meetings and training sessions are out of the way, ask the new hire’s direct manager to assign them a small task. The goal here is to give them an idea of how they’ll work and who they’ll need to coordinate with to get things done.

Make sure the newcomer gets sufficient details and context about the project, alongside examples of what needs to be done. Include point(s) of contact, too.

How to create onboarding videos

Videos show how things are done instead of simply narrating the steps, making them a great tool for onboarding new employees. For instance, you can have an employee onboarding video that welcomes them and walks them through their first 30 days. Similarly, a training tutorial can help explain how your product works.

Note that two types of onboarding videos help – standard and walkthroughs. For the former, you can use video templates to quickly put them together.

Here’s an example welcome video template:

https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js

And here’s an example in action:

On the other side of things, video walkthroughs are screen recordings that feature your screen (and your camera, if you so choose) as you demonstrate how to use your product, for example. Vimeo’s screen recorder gives you the option to share your screen, camera, or both as you walk through your topic.

Our customers love Vimeo Record, with one of them sharing:

“Internally, we’re a distributed team across 10+ hours of time zone and have very limited windows where we’re all online together. Being able to use this tool for asynchronous collaboration gives us back all of our precious time that we’re all online to focus on richer topics!”

HIlah Stahl, Founder of Spoak Décor

Vimeo Record is a simple, effective way to pass along information to new employees as they learn about your business’s systems and practices.

Making a new employee orientation welcome video

This process shouldn’t take you long. Follow these tips:

• Keep the video short – 5 to 10 minutes are ideal. To do so, create a small video on a specific topic, such as one explaining the business’s history, another talking about the company values, and so on.
• Get the executive and direct managers to welcome the new member.
• Get creative to make the new hire feel a part of the team. For instance, in an employee welcome video, we shared the new hire’s interests outside the office.

10 pitfalls of remote onboarding and how to solve for them

Before we wrap this up, here are 10 pitfalls to remote onboarding and how to avoid them:

1. Leaving new hires to learn as they go

First days are always nerve-racking. The unease and I’m new here feeling are only aggravated if the newbie doesn’t know what to do and is left to figure things out on their own. 

The solution? A checklist of all their tasks for day one.

Solution: Create an onboarding checklist of all action items a new hire should complete

For new Vimeans, for instance, we have a Google Docs checklist of Things to Do First. It helps give them direction and push nervous jitters to the background.

2. Not having a roadmap for new hires to thrive

Remote onboarding isn’t something that should be an afterthought. You can’t just wing it. Doing so will only lead to confused and frustrated employees who don’t know how to succeed in their new roles. 

You need to have a plan in place to help them thrive.

Solution: Have a game plan to set your new hire up for success

Create a clear onboarding plan, like the popular 30-60-90 approach, to set distinct tasks for your new hire’s initial months. This plan outlines the tasks new hires are expected to complete within their first 30, 60, and 90 days at the company. And it will give them a clear path to success and productivity. 

This plan is like the new hire’s personal GPS, showing them all of the right turns and milestones to hit during their initial months.

3. Letting new hires adjust to a new company culture alone

Imagine starting at a new company remotely with a completely new company culture to acclimate to—without anyone to guide you through it. Overcoming the challenges of navigating a new workplace virtually makes it a daunting, isolating, and even downright lonely experience.

Solution: Pair new hires with a buddy who can navigate them through your company culture

Have people at the office who are particularly great at warmly welcoming newcomers? Great. Assign them as a go-to buddy for the new hire.

At Vimeo, we assign every new employee a Hire Buddy who guides the newcomer through our work culture and environment while offering guidance and support throughout the first month.Similarly, Buffer assigns two buddies to the new hire – a role buddy, who is from their team, answering any task or role-related questions, and a culture buddy, who is the new member’s company culture guide.

4. Not checking in with new hires enough

You can’t just assume new hires are doing OK. Starting a new job can be stressful and overwhelming at times. And if you’re not checking in enough, you’re not giving these employees the support they need to get settled into their new role.

Solution: Check in regularly

By checking with the new member regularly – inquiring about things and asking if you can help them with anything – you establish that they, too, can reach out to you anytime.

5. Not requesting feedback on the onboarding experience

Onboarding is not something you can put into place once and never revisit again. As a more connected workforce evolves, so must your onboarding process. And if you’re not requesting feedback, you won’t know what you need to improve to make the changes necessary for new hires to succeed.

Solution: Ask for feedback as new hires complete onboarding

Asking all new hires about their onboarding experience is crucial to improve your process according to the feedback you get. At Vimeo, we ask feedback-oriented questions in our 90-day feedback survey.

Some questions you can ask:

• What was it that they enjoyed the most?
• What could have led to a smoother transition?
• Which parts of the onboarding process helped them understand their role and teammates best?

6. Not documenting the entire onboarding process

The onboarding process is a long and complex one. It’s close to impossible to remember every step without documenting the entire process. If you try, it’s easy to forget crucial steps that can make or break a new hire’s onboarding experience. 

Solution: Document the onboarding process from start to finish

Having it all down on paper makes it easy to remember each step. What’s more, it makes it easy for another hiring manager to onboard employees in case you’re off or moving to a new company. Documenting also makes it simple to assign and explain onboarding tasks to specific people.

Here are some steps to document:

• List of key team members the new hire should know.
• List of all the hardware and software the new hire will need.
• Who will set up the new hire’s logins for tools used at work.
• Who is responsible for arranging hardware, how they’ll do so, and by when.
• Guide or one-sheeter for hire buddy covering ways they can offer help and tips for sharing corrective feedback.

7. Relying on boring, unengaging material

While one-pagers, PDFs, and slide decks capture essential information remote hires need, they don’t exactly scream fun. If you want to show your company’s culture and employee experience in your onboarding experience, video may be the way to go. 

Solution: Ramp up the fun factor with video

From a CEO’s welcome message to all the details in your expense system, videos provide the visual medium to tell a compelling story. 

For example, Axalta wanted to boost their virtual training with a cinematic approach to their videos. They wanted to provide a Netflix-style experience and amp up the production value of their videos. To help their team navigate learning topics and training, they organized videos by teams or topics to help shorten ramp-up time and connect with teams at scale.

8. Keeping the process liner and not customizable

The virtual onboarding process is often designed in a linear way, which can be stifling. Learning is not one-size-fits-all, and it can be hard for new hires to get engaged with an onboarding process that’s not customizable.

Solution: Put employees in the driver’s seat

Instead, HR and people teams can create an information library where new hires can curate their own onboarding adventure. This way, they can navigate training with the freedom to revisit and engage with content on their terms.

For example Stellantis, a multinational automotive manufacturing company, turned their training sessions into on demand video content that employees can find and view in the company’s Performance Academy.

“This catalog of content means every employee can learn when and where is best for them. Our training is available 24/7. That’s important, because we see people doing it on their own time, because they know it’s going to improve their own performance.”

Phil Price, Head of The Performance Academy, Stellantis

9. Skipping out on team building during onboarding

The thing with remote work is that employees miss out on those spontaneous in-person interactions that bring coworkers together in a physical office. 

The lunchtime banter, elevator encounters, and hallway catch-ups before meetings contribute are all crucial to immersing your new hires in the company culture. If you don’t prioritize this during onboarding, the process won’t go smoothly and new employees will feel left out. 

Solution: Weave in team-building activities

To recreate some of this vital dynamic, leave some white space in the remote onboarding process for employees to connect. Set up a team Slack channel where remote team members can freely bounce ideas, ask questions, and even share hilarious memes.

Better yet, fun icebreaker remote team bonding activities, like a live quiz show, virtual happy hour, or a sound bath, are unique ways to get everyone excited during those first few weeks.

10. Not prioritizing inclusivity in the onboarding process

When virtually onboarding employees, it’s important that everyone feels included, valued, and represented. If you don’t prioritize this, you’re not providing new hires the environment they need to thrive.

Solution: Be intentional about being inclusive

Make sure that all of the onboarding materials are available in accessible formats, and provide alternative ways for employees to access and understand the content.

Starbucks, for example, never posts a video unless it has captions as an option. And for employees who are visually impaired, consider providing alternative formats such as transcripts or audio-based onboarding materials.

Community onboarding

Vimeo’s onboarding Master Class also dove into the concept of “community onboarding,” discussing how to create an inclusive environment – even in a remote world. Take a peek below:

Virtual onboarding FAQs

What are the 4 phases of onboarding?

The four phases of onboarding are:

1. Orientation (welcoming the new hire) 
2. Role training (coaching them on their new job) 
3. Transition (giving them full responsibility for their role)
4. Ongoing development (creating plans for their career growth)

Is onboarding the same as training?

Onboarding and training are separate programs, but they tend to work together. Onboarding involves introducing new hires to your company, culture, and other employees, whereas training involves activities to explain to the new person how to do their job.

How do you train employees virtually?

Use videos and interactive resources to train employees virtually. A video walkthrough of a specific process, in particular, is a helpful way of showing how to do something instead of merely listing the steps. Hosting content in one place, like a video library, makes it easier for employees to access resources at any time.

How long is the onboarding process?

Generally, an onboarding process is 90 days long, starting with introduction calls and welcome messages and ending with a three-month check-in. The exact duration, however, varies from business to business.

Wrapping up

Now that you know what steps to take and checklists to make, put in the legwork now to enjoy the sweet fruit of employee retention later. What are you waiting for? Pull up a doc and start planning.

Onboard new hires with video