At Linux Academy, at least 50% of the staff we hired were onboarded remotely. You CAN onboard a new hire successfully and have them fully engaged in your organization. Onboarding a remote employee is similar to onboarding an in-office employee, so a lot of this advice is common sense. It’s just all matters more.

You can stumble when onboarding a new employee in the office and still recover. It’s more difficult to recover from a botched onboarding when the employee is working remotely.

Here’s are some things to keep in mind when designing your remote employee onboarding experience.

Connect early

It surprises me how many companies still skip this step, even now when remote work is so ubiquitous.

After the new hire has accepted the offer, set up a time to chat with them before their start date. Just a brief 15-minute conversation (more if you wish) to hit these topics:

• Inquire about their remote experience so you understand their frame of reference. Provide tips & tricks if needed.
• Give a high-level overview of day one and week one (see below) so they know what to expect.
• Confirm where work equipment (computer, monitor, keyboard, etc.) will be shipped when it is expected to arrive, and what they should do with it when it is received. Don’t assume people know.
• Confirm where and how you will communicate until they have their work email provisioned and set up. Handling the IT set-up experience is very important for a remote employee. Think about how to create a guided experience.
• Ask if they have any questions before they start.
• Confirm what they should expect at 9 am on their first day (or whenever their start time is). Should they wait for an email? Is there a call scheduled? Tell them where to “be” at the start of their first day. More on this below.

Coordinate between IT, the hiring manager, and the recruiter to ensure there has been good pre-start communication that covers the above items and starts to build a relationship with your new employee early. The worst thing you can do is not communicate between offer acceptance and start date, leaving the candidate guessing what’s to come. More pre-start communication is needed for a remote employee to coordinate the logistics of getting set up and to send the signal that you are a company that cares about the employee experience.

Provision equipment and accounts on time

The worst thing that can happen is that an employee’s first day comes around and you are totally unprepared. Make sure the employee has received their equipment, you’ve provisioned their accounts (email, Slack, etc.), and that they know how to set up their accounts.

Codify culture & working norms

At some point, culture and norms need to be codified so that new people understand what’s expected of them and how to succeed in your organization. In the early days of a startup you can get by without this because new people join at a reasonable pace, get familiar with the working norms on their own, and settle in (or don’t). As you scale, you need a way for people to get up to speed faster and to document unspoken rules. And if you are remote, you really need to do this from day one.

I like to create a “How We Work” document that explains your company’s norms and expectations. This avoids leaving the employee guessing, even about simple things like whether or not they need to put in a time off request for a doctor’s appointment.

In a remote environment, you’ll need an internal wiki where staff can read about your culture, values, OKRs, “how we work” and other related content. This should be emphasized frequently for all staff, especially new employees who should be taken through it during their onboarding.

Schedule week one