Join America Back to Work, a weekly podcast, video, and blog series that covers timely and relevant topics affecting the labor market and workforce with industry experts. The series includes recruiting, hiring, retention, employee satisfaction, customer service, background screenings, and more.
The Benefits of Remote Onboarding
Currently, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, and while that’s more than double pre-pandemic numbers (from 2019), it’s still far less than what the experts predicted during the pandemic.
Many thought that remote work would become a permanent norm after several leading organizations closed their offices and many tech companies sent their employees home “for good.”
By this point, we all know what the C-suite reservations are around remote work: it stifles collaboration, it silos information, employees aren’t as productive at home as originally thought, things move slower, company information is insecure on home networks, it’s difficult to onboard new employees. And so on.
But, not all of these fears are founded, and, in some cases, remote work can benefit the company.
The Bright Side of Remote Hiring
Many of those benefits show up during remote hiring. One of the primary benefits of remote work is that the company isn’t limited to geographic location or the local talent pool when looking for candidates.
Now, companies can hire out of town or across state lines which opens up the door for greater hiring opportunities when it comes to quality of talent, skill sets, cost-saving, and influence in new markets.
For example, tech companies can now hire top engineering talent from tech hubs outside their region. Similarly, companies located in expensive areas—where salaries run high and office space is pricey—can seek less expensive customer service talent in more affordable areas to help their bottom line.
But while many organizations understand the numerous benefits of remote hiring, they’re more concerned about what happens after you bring someone on. How do you get them to buy into company culture from afar? How do you get them acclimated to the team and its workflows? How do you collect all the data and signatures you need to employ someone from afar legally?
Remote Onboarding Improves
Interestingly, onboarding is an area of human capital management that remote work has drastically improved. Remote onboarding simplifies the integration of new employees into the organization by making it more accessible, flexible, personalized, and efficient.
Now, new hires can complete onboarding from any location, in an environment they feel comfortable in, as they take on new information. They can complete tasks and learn at their own pace, rather than feeling pressure from peers around them.
Remote hiring has forced companies to digitize their onboarding processes completely, making the experience more streamlined and efficient. It’s significantly reduced the time it takes for HR and new professionals to complete the process, and, thanks to the added tech, all employees now receive a uniform education around company culture and expectations regardless of their location.
The digital nature of remote onboarding has made it easier for employers to customize learning modules for a specific role or department–meaning that onboarding content is more valuable than ever before for each individual and new employee time to productivity is shortened.
Virtual and remote onboarding also helps HR professionals manage all the data collection and record-keeping required for compliant employment. It’s eco-friendly since remote onboarding is paperless and requires no travel.
While the benefits are clear, transitioning to a digital onboarding process can present challenges, such as technological barriers and data security concerns (since so much sensitive employee data is passed around during this time). To address these issues, companies can invest in user-friendly, secure onboarding platforms and provide training to HR staff and new hires on how to use these systems effectively.