Failure to Launch: The COVID Conundrum for Employers
The acceleration of the work-from-home (WFH) trend has been much discussed since the onset of COVID-19. Depending on your industry, organizations had to get comfortable FAST with remote technologies and leading teams from a distance. The general consensus seems to be that the end result of our national remote office experiment was good, as it provided room for much-needed discussions around work/life balance, employee flexibility, and the fundamentals of leadership.One discussion has been neglected, however. With so many offices going hybrid or fully remote, best practices for onboarding new employees have sometimes been lost in the shift. A lot of ink has been spilled on maintaining culture during WFH… but how do you immerse a brand-new employee in your workplace culture when you are onboarding them online? How do you help them find a niche on the team when they may not have met any of their coworkers in person? And how should you go about relating office norms when you can’t simply pop by the new employee’s office?These are just a few of the questions that may arise while launching a new employee in the COVID WFH era. None of this has been easy… we’ve all been undergoing these shifts while under enormous stress and uncertainty. In that light, it’s important to remember that if you feel like you are missing a certain “special something” with remote teams, that is perfectly normal. If you have an amazing in-person culture at your company, it will take WORK to translate that to a strong remote culture. One local business owner, Rob Wise (CEO of ITinspired), shared some wisdom about the necessity of being deliberate with this process.“We prided ourselves on being masters of in-person and felt like we had that ‘special sauce,’ culture-wise,” Rob said. “It turned out to be a lot more work and hard to emulate in the remote work environment. Work from home became efficient, but tough to get the daily heartbeat on our people as we had around the cubicles or break room. Nothing could replace the intentional ‘hey, how you doing?’ like we had face-to-face. My lessons learned all point to being intentional and deliberate with each and every employee you have. Stoke the fire of every relationship and have as many touchpoints as possible.”These tips will help you engage every employee on your team in a remote environment; but are especially designed in mind for onboarding and engaging new employees on a digital team.
Communicate & over-communicate
Create those touchpoints to talk about work, answer questions about company life, AND simply… check-in. Send a text, ask how their day is going, inquire about things outside of work. Working in remote silos, the assumption is that frequent check-ins may come across as overbearing. But as Rob said, we encourage you to intentionally instigate the moments you would have around the water cooler. For new hires especially, lack of frequent touchpoints make it feel like their team has disappeared into the ether.Mimi Singer Lee, Executive Vice President/Chief Human Resources Officer at b1BANK, agrees that communication is crucial. “If we learned anything from the pandemic and its impact on onboarding new hires, it is to be flexible and open to all forms of communication,” said Mimi. “From the HR teams’ interaction with hiring managers to training our new hires, we quickly embraced the remote work environment along with the online resources available to us to ensure we were communicating effectively and often and in a position to respond to whatever new opportunity the day would bring.”
Transfer your people practices to the remote office
All of them. If you do Friday lunch, send your people meals. Keep up the company softball team. For new hires, simulate their “first day” introductions just as you would when taking them around the cubicles. It’s more than possible to run a fully-integrated team remotely, if you keep in mind that WFH does not give a pass for providing fewer niceties and social perks than you would in-office.
Make your policies clear
Establish the norms for virtual meetings (Cameras on? Everyone on mute at the start?) and make sure everyone has access to calendars they need, process guides, and other information that makes the work run smoothly. Who was maintaining the birthday calendar and ordering cake at the office? Make sure small details that everyone assumes “just happen” don’t fall by the wayside.
Create a “new hire” roster
Honestly, being able to see at a glance who’s who is helpful for everybody! The roster can include an image, useful and fun facts for everybody on the team, communication preferences. If a team member isn’t sure who to turn to for a topical question, a glance at the roster will tell them. A resource like this seems simple and fun, but can help enormously with social cues and building political savvy among coworkers.
The truth is, as we all know, change is a constant in the workplace. As Millennial and Gen Z employees join the workforce, new technologies and cultural norms join with them. Even before the pandemic, high use of collaborative tech, remote work preferences among employees, and flexibility in communication was becoming standard. While the pandemic forced companies who had never grappled with this before onto the learning curve, it’s certain that the shift would have occurred anyway. Stay tuned for the next part of our series on “Failure to Launch” – engaging young professionals on remote teams.Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to grow leaders, build teams and drive results through great people strategy. Contact us to get proactive about expanding your company’s potential, and stay up-to-date with our latest news and leadership development updates here.