First Intuition Think Tank Friday - Remote Onboarding

Lovewell Blake

During our first First Intuition Think Tank (FITT) fortnight, we discussed the topic of Remote Onboarding, a hot topic for many employers. We were delighted to be joined by Felix Mitchell, Founder and Director at Instant Impact and Will Dempsey, Global Talent Acquisition Lead at AstraZeneca. They shared their own experiences of remote onboarding and gave insights into best practice in this area. In our second session on this topic, we were also joined by representatives from the AAT, ACCA, CIMA and ICAEW who provided an industry-specific perspective on this subject.

So much valuable content emerged in the discussions that this article summarises some of the key points. There are also links to the Employer Insight report we commissioned as well as the recordings of both sessions.

If you need any reassurance or advice on the subject of remote onboarding this is a great place to start.

Session 1

Martin Taylor and Hazel Rogers from First Intuition discussed the content of our latest employer Insight Report. The title of this is ‘Meeting the challenges of remotely onboarding new employees and bringing them into your company culture’.

We were also joined by Felix Mitchell, Founder and Director of Instant Impact. He shared his own expertise and some client case studies.

Some key points that emerged:

There is often a ‘black hole’ between when the recruitment team finish their job and the HR team start theirs. This ‘pre-boarding’ period between an accepted offer and the first day at work is actually critical for successfully integrating new team members who will be working remotely.
Social events are just as important when working remotely.
A buddy-system for new starters is invaluable for making them feel welcomed to the team and building organisational loyalty.
Informal contact with senior leaders is important for new starters and needs to be deliberately planned when everyone is working at home as they will rarely cross paths in a coffee room.
During their onboarding, new starters should be encouraged to ‘contribute as well as consume’.

You can hear the full discussion here

Session 2

We were joined by Will Dempsey, Global Talent Acquisition Lead at AstraZeneca. He talked about his experience of building a remote onboarding programme including a couple of useful toolkits.

We also invited insight specialists from AAT, ACCA, CIMA and ICAEW to provide their tips and best practice for employers.

Interesting points from this session:

It’s important to identify the potential stress points for each new joiner so that plans can be put in place to mitigate them.
Getting to know individuals is going to be crucial. This may involve some low-level personality profiling such as Myers Briggs.
Someone needs to take ownership of the onboarding process as it often falls down the hole between ‘recruitment’ and ‘induction’.
Ensure that there is communication across teams as well as within them to avoid ‘silos’ developing where staff don’t know colleagues in other departments.
‘Planned informality’ is needed to replace relationship-building communication that would happen organically and naturally in an office environment.