Plantronics : Three Essential Connections to Onboard Employees Remotely

As we've discussed in previous blogs, creating a thriving workplace culture in the hybrid working era takes special considerations to make sure employees feel engaged, supported, and aligned with the company's mission and values. This is especially important for new employees who are joining companies at a time when teams are increasingly remote and distributed across geographies and time zones. Managers need a strategy for onboarding new remote team members to ensure they are on equal footing with peers working from the company headquarters.

It all comes down to one thing: connections.

Connecting New Hires to Your Company

New hires are focused on absorbing as much information as they can to learn the business. Their minds are like sponges trying to soak up as much as they can as quickly as they can. New hires are absorbing the basics about who the company is, how and when it formed, pivotal moments, the culture, and benefits available to them. If employees can easily access information, have clear conversations, and connect to the company even from afar they will be much more successful. Having access to the right technologyout of the gate is paramount. Employees need to be able to hear and see the onboarding team, ask questions, and feel connected the entire way. If they are successfully connected to their company in this time, employees will make decisions with the big picture in mind to help drive success in all that they do. It's a win/win for both the new hire, the team, and the company.

Connecting New Hires to Their Team and Key Stakeholders

The people you work with can make or break the experience. New hires are eager to make connections to their team and key stakeholders, but this can be challenging in a remote environment. If new hires can't be seen and heard they will struggle to connect. An easy and inclusive practice we've adopted at Poly is making sure that people managers are proactively asking new team members for their opinions and ideas during team meetings to get them engaged and encourage interaction with their peers. Now that in-person team building is not an option, allocating the first five minutes of a call to catching up about personal interests or hobbies or taking turns to share quick updates. These small yet impactful interactions go a long way in creating a feeling of belonging, replicating what used to occur around the water cooler (remember those?).

Connecting New Hires to Their Role

In addition to learning about the company and completing meet and greets, new hires are also trying to understand and clearly define their role and responsibilities. Gaining this understanding early on is important so new hires can align with their manager on strategy and approach. This serves as a compass helping them narrow in on the focus areas that will have the biggest impact while helping them feel like they are moving the needle. Part of a good employee experience is feeling like your work is meaningful and understanding how it ladders up to the company objectives. At Poly, we have rolled out an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) process that starts with senior leadership defining key objectives for the company that every team then aligns to. This way everyone can define and track how their contributions support our overall objectives. Walking new hires through the OKR process and establishing their personal objectives has been very impactful to help position their roles as mission-critical right out of the gate.

Equality for All Meeting Participants

At Poly, we want to ensure that every new hire has an opportunity to shine and contribute, regardless of whether they are working behind closed doors in a quiet office or at their dining room table with roommates, children, and dogs wreaking havoc in the background. Our professional-grade gear including headsets, conference and business phones, video conferencing cameras, software, and services help to ensure your new hires make these connections without skipping a beat. To learn more visit www.Poly.com