Remotely onboarding new team member
There are many new and exciting challenges we are facing currently, and one that is unavoidable and tricky for everyone is onboarding new staff members while we all work from home.
I have spoken to some of our charity clients who have been dealing with this over the last couple of weeks, as I wanted to share what has worked for them in the hope that you can set-up your new team member to be as productive and feel as included as if they were in the office.
- Invite them to virtual drinks before the start date
- Build a thorough induction plan and put it on Trello – it’s a free platform where you can both track what has taken place and what is outstanding which will be helpful further down the line for monitoring performance
- Recognise the start and end of their first week on Yamma/Whatsapp/Friday drinks
- Meet via video every day – you will need to build trust and a relationship with your new starter, communication is key to that and this will give them time to ask the questions they will inevitably have
- Set up meetings with each department and structure this with questions for them to ask the teams they are meeting
- Screenshare with Teams and Zoom is fantastic for training – for systems and tasks you can teach through screen share, you can even record these sessions so other teams in the organisation can send them to their new starters
- Nominate a buddy for them – they aren’t going to want to come to you with all of their questions, put in lunch once a week with a buddy to ensure this relationship is happening
- Get them to join Fundraising Chat, SIG groups so they have a social network outside of work
- Set weekly deliverables with Trello – so that you can keep track of their workload, both of you should be able to add tasks
- Get them to sign up for online training (a few suggestions below)
- Eventbrite
- LinkedIn Learning
- Reed – discounted for a limited period
- Youtube for Excel training
- IOF online seminars
- Harvard – not all work related but some interesting options
- Put in social time – most places have already built-in time for tea or virtual drinks but make sure you ban work and COVID-19 chat to keep a relaxed feel
- Be honest and human – we’ve all seen a lot more of each other’s lives over the last three weeks, don’t worry about being ultra-professional and stoic, your team need more compassion and honest interaction in the current period
- Find them a virtual mentor – we are happy to help with this so just get in touch – [email protected]
