Who’s in charge of onboarding new hires in your company? The hiring manager? HR? The COO (because processes)? Everyone? Or do you hope they somehow figure out how things work?
In an office (allegedly), newbies learn by observing everyone else. Hopefully, they make friends soon, so they can ask someone they trust about all the idiosyncrasies of THIS specific workplace. In a remote situation, that doesn’t translate very well.
Even if you have a very detailed handbook, that is not enough. Someone needs to introduce the new hire into the company culture you want to perpetuate. Your goal is to make the new person feel welcome and part of the company. Here’s the trifecta of good onboarding.
Clear expectations for the first 30-60-90 days, set by the hiring manager, preferably in writing: learnings, outcomes, culture.
Proactive introduction to key people: decision makers and internal influencers.
An onboarding buddy and/or a seasoned mentor.
Your company’s values should be woven through the entire process. “We do this because we believe xyz.”
The importance of the onboarding buddy
It doesn’t matter how flat your hierarchies are; there is a (perceived) power imbalance between yourself and the person you just hired. You are responsible for their salary, after all.
Plus, you are probably busy and won’t necessarily have time for several weekly meetings with the new team member. The solution is to connect them with one or several colleagues who can support them during the first three to six months.
If your company has fewer than 50 people, one onboarding buddy is enough.
If your company has more people, you can afford to appoint an onboarding buddy and a mentor.
Disrupting silos through human connection
Pairing every new hire with a mentor or buddy from outside their immediate team is something I’ve seen at Automattic, implemented at Klaus (now Zendesk) and ZF, and recommended everywhere else. And it works really well for creating a sense of belonging.
An onboarding buddy is a coworker reporting to a different team leader. They are responsible for cultural onboarding during the first three months: This is how we do things here.
A mentor (optional) is a senior person who has been with the company for a long time (whatever “long” means in your context). They check in quarterly to discuss internal politics and career decisions with the new hire.
Don’t hesitate to pair an engineer with a marketing person, or a designer with someone from sales. If your company has a hybrid setup, connect fully remote people with someone who has access to headquarters and vice versa.
The role of the onboarding buddy - in detail
Company culture is what people do every day. Having someone whose official role is to ask all those beginner questions reduces friction and speeds up the learning process. Friendship might develop (increasing loyalty), though this is not a requirement.
Access to an onboarding buddy reduces loneliness, especially for shy people. It can be intimidating to join non-work chats or know where to ask for help on specific policies. Having a buddy who can present the new hire in selected channels or answer starter questions does a lot for inclusion.
An onboarding buddy can reduce anxiety. Sometimes it’s the simple questions that create the biggest insecurities. “Can I walk the dog / drop off a package during work hours? How long? Do I need to tell anyone?” The onboarding buddy very likely knows the answer even if it’s not recorded in the handbook.
Connecting people from different departments reduces silo thinking and avoids us vs. them situations. By pairing wildly different departments, you’ll break down silos simply by humanising the existence of the others. Pair engineers with accounting, support people with marketing, marketing with engineering, etc., and you’ll increase empathy across the board.
If you’d like to try this out in your company, here’s the blueprint for a mentor guide that you can (and should) adapt to your own reality:
New Hire Buddy Guide
The Onboarding Buddy should have been at the company for a minimum of six months. HR or managers decide on the pairings, choosing from volunteers who signed up to be buddies. The time commitment is one hour per week during the first months, and one hour every other week for months two and three.
Instructions for the buddy
Check in with the new hire on day 1. Present yourself, maybe have a (virtual) coffee.
Review their agenda for the first week to see if it makes sense: is there anyone else you think they should be talking to? Is the onboarding task list ready? (If not, ping their manager.)
Schedule a weekly 30-45 min meeting for the first four weeks, and biweekly (every two weeks) meetings for months 2 and 3. You will find recommended topics further down on this page – and they are just that: recommendations. Feel free to bring your own topics.
Do not skip those meetings! It is part of our remote culture maintenance. Our communication depends on us having strong connections between sometimes-in-office and almost-never-in-office folks.
Go through as many of the topics on the Onboarding checklist as you feel like.
Answer questions, all the questions.
Don’t know what to talk about in your check-ins? Have a look at the conversation menus in this article. Here are some additional starting points for the first two months:
Week 1: People
Present yourself, get to know each other.
Who is who and who is responsible for what within the company? Are there specific people they should talk to learn about fascinating stuff that may or may not be related to work? This is a great way to reach out to new people and have THEM talk about their passion (and get a peek in what they work on).
The productivity nerd
The photographer
The poker player
The one renovating houses…
Which meetings are there for everyone – how to find out and which to attend?
Week 2: Practicalities
Expensing guidelines and reports (for those who are remote) or how to get access to tools/headphones etc etc
How do you manage vacations, e.g. how do people usually communicate and organise their days off? If you have employees in different countries – how is that handled? Where do you communicate that you are out-of-office (calendar, Slack, Teams etc).
Week 3: Communication
How has their experience been so far using your internal communication suite? What works well? What’s different to what they were used to? What’s new? What do they struggle with?
If you use different types of communication for different types of discussion (e.g. Github, Slack, internal blog, Confluence) – what is the difference, and how can they participate?
Social Slack channels and which one YOU enjoy most – maybe go through the channel list and check out what has been added in the past
Existing documentation that can be helpful in general, including where to publish ideas.
Week 4: Productivity
Helpful tools you are using. Discuss best practices from others. Maybe there’s an internal list that you can review and update together?
Task management – share your approaches?
How do you make sure to stay on track and stay on task in general?
Week 6: Remote-first
What is the company’s version of remote? What stands out to you as an employee? You can use the Dimensions of Distributed Work, if that helps.
Share your experiences about the places you are working from (WFA, WFH, different offices, etc.). What’s similar, what’s different? How can you make sure locations do not create misalignment or inequality?
Week 8: Retrospective
After the first two months, how does the new hire feel about working here? What has been the biggest challenge? If appropriate, write up some feedback from your perspective for HR or the hiring manager about improvements to the process.
Feel free to continue meeting if you enjoyed spending time together. It doesn’t have to be only about work. Otherwise, you’ll probably meet each other at meetups, or in shared social channels.
Hi, I am Valentina Thörner, Empress of Remote, Product Person and Process Nerd. I teach remote and hybrid managers to become excellent leaders so they can thrive together with their teams. The next cohort , including group classes and 1-1 coaching, starts end-of-March, with an in-person meetup in May: https://remotethatworks.com/meetup-mastery
