New onboard of employee during WFH policy

Thailand continues to be hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. While many companies in Bangkok have allowed for many and in some cases all of their employees to work from home to flatten the curve adopting the practice of social distancing, there are numerous newly hired employees in many organizations that should be taken care of carefully and which can be described as “newcomers”. These newcomers are in most cases post Covid-19 hires.

The large challenge is that these newcomers would have limited or in some cases no opportunities to get to know their colleagues and to adapt themselves into the new organization culture due to the strict work from home policy. It is therefore important that an organization puts in place means that newcomers can use both verbal and non-verbal communication methods to build relationships with their new colleagues to help them fit in to the new culture. However, working from home will still force newcomers to adopt a ‘virtual’ way of onboarding with it being imperative to turn on a camera and microphone. The following are tips to create a remote effective onboarding program for newcomers that fall into this category: –

• Send necessary organization paperwork and information covering policies by emails;
• Schedule onboarding meetings with new hiring manager and team members and set some projects and deadlines to present online;
• Schedule online virtual coffee time for new hires to meet with colleagues and team members or different parts of the organization to help build meaningful relationships and provide new hires with a better understanding of how the company works; and,
• Encourage newcomers to follow company’s social channels like company Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram where continuous organizational content is published while working remotely.

In addition to the above tips, I would also recommend that frequency is the key. Checking in with newcomers every 2-3 days would ensure that newcomers are still ‘on track’ and feel that they are not left behind.