Hiring & Onboarding Employees - A Step by Step Guide
How do you ensure you set someone up for success when it comes to a new remote team member? And how do you ensure they are also a part of the team, since a team is critical when it comes to remote work. Here are the steps you can be sure to follow:
It starts with a great job description
Hire for culture first, and skills second
Keep your team structure top of mind
Bring them on the right way
Come alongside them so they can learn about culture
Equip first through coaching
Find the cadence that works for you
It starts with a great job description
You can almost never be too clear on the role and the responsibilities that this new person will take on. That also sets them up for success, and it ensures you are ready to hire.
At Edoc, we make sure to include our company purpose in that job description, too; we aim to communicate from the start how important our purpose is to any potential candidate. Plus, this can help to attract the right kind of person to add to our team, and that is something you ALWAYS want to be doing and working on. We also encourage them to read some of our blog posts, to see if our culture resonates with them.
Hire For Culture First
Let’s face it: remote hiring and onboarding all comes down to culture. To that end, the experience a new hire has with your organization starts before they are officially hired, and that’s true whether you are remote-first or not. Companies can get into a rush to hire once they decide they are ready to bring a new team member on, but we do our best to create a well-written, accurate job description.
Team Structure is Key, So Keep it Top of Mind
Another key piece of the picture is our team, and we want to keep our team cohesive, healthy, and working towards the same goals.
What that looks like in action with hiring is that we get as clear as we can about the role and responsibilities, and how those fit into our current team and structure. As straightforward as this may seem, we’ve learned the value in taking the time to describe the role as accurately as we can. If we’re unable to do so, it’s likely time to pause before hiring anyone.
Not only that, we have multiple team members talk to the new candidate(s) so that we do our best to get someone that is a good cultural fit.
Bring Them On the Right Way
When the new person is selected, equip them with freedom, but also the right amount of support. As one example. with our latest hire, we used OGSM to help clarify expectations and stay on track when it came to their first 6 months. OGSM—standing for Objective, Goals, Strategies and Measures–is a business planning framework that can be used in a variety of ways, and we applied it here with onboarding.
The Objective made it clear what the underlying objective of the position would be. The Goals were designed to be as tangible as possible—but without overthinking it.
It’s not about control here, it’s about giving someone autonomy and freedom, but also giving them support along the way.
Examples of objective statements from one of our latest hires included the following:
· Fluent in demonstrating and training users on our software
· Become an expert practitioner for our eSign and Onboard products
· Proficient in diagnosing and handling incoming customer support inquiries
· Familiar with Edoc processes, team members, and familiar with the way we operate
· Familiar with Edoc’s culture (our purpose, values, and more)
Besides the objectives and goals defined, we also came up with strategies tied to key milestones. An example of what a strategy could be for a business development role would be: “develop personal relationships and rapport with key company contacts.” Then the milestones would be meetings with a list of contacts, for example.
All in all, for our last hire, this ended up being a simplistic, two-page document—and that was by design. Then, on a week-to-week basis, that document came to life in Trello, which we were using at the time.
Come alongside them so they can learn about culture
When we bring someone on, we do our best to have them “shadow” and meet with key team members. The focus is on CULTURE here and that’s really the aim at that point.
This was not only to continue to welcome the new team member, but this allows this person to get to know the other team members more in that time, too.
At Buffer, a totally remote team, they implement a similar concept and call it a “culture buddy.” They say that this person “is typically on a different team and selected to help guide the new hire through culture-related discussions and provide additional context on company history and norms. This buddy will chat weekly with the new hire for the first six weeks, and as needed thereafter.”
Equip first through coaching
With any new job, there’s the actual operational nature of your job, and your responsibilities, but there is also all the cultural components and the soft skills that help you to succeed. As we see it, culture is the glue that holds the company together (not my words!). To that end, coaching and supporting a new hire is critical in that process.
People learn a great deal more through shared experiencing and mentoring and coaching compared to traditional “training”—such as courses someone takes to learn knowledge or skills.
Unfortunately, many organizations can focus more on the traditional training aspects (like going through a long training session) rather than putting mentoring and coaching at the forefront.
While traditional “training” or classroom sessions have their place, keep thinking about what mentoring, shadowing, and coaching can do to help your people gain knowledge and hands-on experience. We’ve learned time and time again that this will go so much further than traditional courses or training you put people through.
Find the cadence that works for you
Of course any new hire and onboarding experience is going to involve meetings and check-ins. You want to be sure someone feels empowered and supported, and you also want to continue to help someone during these critical first few months.
Every (remote) team and every organization will have a different cadence and rhythm, but be sure to find what works for you.
For our last hire, that meant making sure to have check-ins at the beginning of the week, and end of the week, and often in between. We strive to create a safe place for asking questions, since someone needs to be comfortable with reaching out in a remote environment, so we want to encourage that behavior as much as we can—that’s the real aim here.
Try a Digital Employee Onboarding Tool
Are you looking to find a solution that can help you hire people all online?
Onboard makes new hire paperwork painless—as it should be. With Onboard, you can send forms including W-4, I-9, W-9, state specific documents, direct deposit information, and additional custom documents to new hires to fill out completely online.
That way, new employees and independent contractors are up to speed within minutes with you, not days. The worker experience starts during hiring, so make it the best it can be.
