The document discusses virtual onboarding for new employees. It defines virtual onboarding as new-hire programs delivered online without in-person orientation. Virtual onboarding can enhance employee engagement for remote workers, improve experience across generations, and reduce costs. Key benefits include enhancing social interaction and reducing time-to-competency. Effective virtual onboarding requires tailoring content to audiences, leveraging technology like video meetings, and monitoring/improving programs. A case study shows how Vodafone India successfully used eLearning to train its dispersed workforce.
As soon as employees start a new job, the clock begins ticking. An effective onboarding program is essential to quickly bring new hires up to speed on an organization’s mission, policies, objectives, systems, and daily practices, as well as ensure they can be productive as soon as possible. Surprisingly, only 60 percent of employees believe their company’s orientation program for new employees is adequate, and only 63 percent believe their organization currently provides effective on-the-job training. Over the last few years, many companies have launched new onboarding programs to better inform, connect, and engage new hires from day one. In fact, some businesses, such as PepsiCo, are communicating with their new hires well before their first day on the job. PepsiCo launched an employee onboarding Website to help new employees familiarize themselves with the company and their role in it before their official first day on the job. New PepsiCo employees also receive a basket containing PepsiCo products so they can try them and become a brand advocate before coming onboard. This is not only a welcoming best practice, but an excellent way to create brand awareness that will directly result in brand advocacy.Radio Flyer, one of HR Solutions’ clients, does not waste any time engaging new staff members either. On their first day, new hires receive a red welcome wagon they can take home to share with their family and friends, immediately enabling the employee to build a relationship with the brand. Other organizations, such as IBM, are engaging their new employees with a comprehensive onboarding program that goes well beyond a new employee’s first 90 days. In early 2010, IBM launched a two-year onboarding effort called Succeeding@IBM. The program comprises four phases (Discover IBM, Share and Connect, Grow My Career, and Find Support) and uses technology-based opportunities, such as live virtual classes and online communities, to build strong relationships between the company’s employees.
“Virtual onboarding” describes new hire programs delivered over the web that complement or replace in-person new hire onboarding. It allows the new employee to more readily become assimilated to the corporate culture, with the advantage of consistent, standardized, new hire messaging and content delivered anywhere around the world and on any device. Virtual onboarding also enables organizations to begin the onboarding process with a new hire’s offer letter and continue it throughout the employee’s first year (or more) at the company.
The very nature of virtual onboarding implies that technology will play a major enabling role. Increasingly, mobile technologies, smartphones, tablets, and other types of wireless devices are integral to today’s virtual onboarding. The effective application of various types of technology is critical to the efficiency and consistency required for successful onboarding programs.In fact, Bersin research found that high-impact organizations are able to reduce costs, engage new hires, establish organization wide consistency, and extend their virtual onboarding programs through the use of technology. As discussed previously, technology can also help to address different generational expectations during the onboarding process (e.g., millennials’ preference for interactive media tools and access to social networking sites). When we describe a “virtual” approach to onboarding new members of the workforce, we are describing a talent management process likely composed of social interactions (as discussed later in this section), as well as other formal or self-paced learning and development experiences. A virtual approach to onboarding also means that the program is supported and enabled by VLEs, online collaboration tools, and other technologies that allow it to bridge geographically disperse work zones. VLEs are essential enablers for virtual onboarding. By combining interactive virtual locations, training centers, virtual mentoring, social networking, and other collaboration tools, VLEs create an engaging onboarding experience for wide-ranging programs and employee needs. Moreover, VLEs enable new employees to access training courses at any time and from any location.
Many global companies are struggling with the results of ineffective onboarding programs across all segments of their global workforce. Their onboarding programs are also often inconsistent and costly because face-to-face onboarding requires repetitive allocation of resources. In addition, traditional new employee orientation programs do not always create effective employee engagement or onboarding to the company’s unique culture. As evidenced in a report from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Libby Hemphill and Andrew Begel found that geographically dispersed workers often experience difficulty in adapting to their work environments. In fact, Hemphill and Begel found evidence that inadequate onboarding of a global workforce can significantly impede the performance, productivity, and morale of geographically dispersed employees.Virtual onboarding offers an opportunity for the expeditious delivery of complete, timely, and cost-conscious onboarding. Enabled by VLEs, virtual onboarding is particularly well suited for global companies that want to provide consistent delivery of the company’s branding messages, cultural norms, and employee expectations, while facilitating the socialization of a workforce widely dispersed over numerous countries and continents.
All new employees—from baby boomers to millennials—want to feel welcome within the company culture and productive as members of a multigenerational workforce. Some of the areas in which virtual onboarding enhances the new hire experience for a multigenerational workforce include the following: • Leveraging Social Media and Appealing to Millennials. Although some organizations develop their own social networking sites, others are integrating popular social media tools into their onboarding strategies. Virtual onboarding solutions (and the VLEs that support them) can provide social media capabilities for new hires and all members of the work community surrounding them. Particularly important for millennials, social media is at the heart of their world. It allows them to connect with coworkers and friends globally at great speed. • Avoiding “One Size Fits All” Onboarding. An essential step in developing a virtual onboarding strategy for multigenerational workers is to understand the different expectations and priorities each generation demands from a new employer. The flexibility and creativity enabled by virtual onboarding allows all types of global firms to tailor their onboarding experience for workers of any age.
Virtual Onboarding Promotes Cost Containment In addition to accruing the benefits of efficiency and quality, virtual onboarding can help to contain rising costs for onboarding and retaining new hires. Cost containment is critical for today’s talent management leaders because of the sizeable financial losses that poorly executed onboarding can bring to an organization. The primary opportunity for cost containment is eliminating in-person onboarding training and the repetition of non standardized onboarding programs across the company. Virtual onboarding done well enables the delivery of a uniformly high-quality, consistent, and standardized onboarding experience for all employees. Another opportunity for cost containment is that of new hire retention. The untimely loss of new hires represents a significant cost. As reported in a recent study, one-fourth of all newly hired workers leave their company within a year of being hired—at an average cost of $10,731 for recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training each lost employee.16 Add to that figure the cost of temporary replacement workers, lost productivity costs, and the intangible “cost” of damaged morale for workers who remain. As an effective alternative, virtual onboarding can help new hires to become better engaged and add value quickly, as well as serve as a powerful tool for cost containment in a variety of ways: • By reducing time-to-competency, organizations are able to more quickly convert new hires into productive and profitable employees. • By reducing the time required to deliver relatively expensive onboarding program components (e.g., classroom training, manager coaching, time lost by subject matter experts (SMEs) who teach or provide new hire mentoring), virtual onboarding can also reduce costly investment in one or more of these activities. • By reducing or eliminating the high costs of travel, lodging, and nonproductive time away from the job, virtual onboarding can make a substantial contribution to a company’s overall cost-containment efforts. • In addition, virtual onboarding done well has the potential to reduce employee attrition, and thus contain costs.
In many organizations, reducing time-to-competency for new employees is a critical driver of profitability. In fact, reducing time-to-competency for new hires can mean more products developed, more services delivered, more orders filled, more deals in the pipeline, more marketing activity, and/or more customer contact. Virtual onboarding (supported by VLEs) can help to significantly decrease time to proficiency by providing effective (formal and informal) training and knowledge sharing, and by enabling new hires to more quickly “join the conversation.”17 Looking beyond the standard types of formal training that virtual onboarding can facilitate, new hires may benefit equally from participating in the informal and cultural learning that occurs every day in the business. As we discuss further in this report, virtual onboarding can also provide access to the ongoing activity stream—popular links and insights, internal chatter, and questions being asked—of the workgroup and the entire company. These virtual onboarding features will not only reduce time-to-competency through delivery and access to job skills training but will likely also help to integrate new hires much faster and more effectively into their new work groups and relevant “conversations.”
Virtual Onboarding Facilitates Social Interaction Virtual onboarding supports and facilitates the social element in onboarding new hires to the company culture and work assignments. Particularly if new workers are located remotely, VLEs enable the individual’s manager to interact with the new hire in a welcoming, informative, and supportive manner. Virtual onboarding also enables a company to: • Leverage managers’ valuable knowledge and experience, easing their ability to mentor new hires regardless of location. • Enable SMEs to serve as online training facilitators, helping to enhance the real world applicability of lessons and quality of learning experiences.
Phase 1 Selection Assessment Leadership style Behavioral interviewing Panel review RJPPhase 2 Pre boarding Communications Customized onboarding plan Preliminary stakeholder analysis by HR Champions HR policy Technology needs analysisPhase 3 Integration Meet coworkers Team transition meeting Stakeholder mapping and interviewsPhase 4 Execution Regular manager reviews Scorecard Ongoing coaching and feedbackDeliver results Metrics reviewed 360° survey
Incorporate knowledge, skills, abilities, and personalcharacteristics required for success in a virtual role into theselection process Preferences Skills Attributes
Know your audience – Understanding what they will need to know about joining the company and how they prefer to consume the information is key. For global virtual content, short and simple email communications with links to topical webinars and key reference information may be an optimal approach. It’s important to recognize new hires will be better positioned for success if their manager is fully engaged with their onboarding. Therefore, creating communications for their managers is a good idea as it enables them to be better prepared to support their new employee, particularly for those early in their career who don’t come to the organization with a wealth of experience in the corporate environment.Tailor your message- Involve SME and take time to conduct interviews to gain a good understanding of the company culture in order to customize the content and integrate the corporate nomenclature is critical. Incorporating tips about how to successfully contribute to your company makes the content much more relevant and speeds up the process of the new hire figuring out those unwritten rules.
Tell stories – Part of the customization happens when you incorporate the real-life stories of people who have successfully demonstrated the behaviors you are highlighting in your on-boarding materials. People remember stories so it helps the new hire remember what success looks like and identify with role models they can emulate.Leverage technology- The very nature of virtual curriculum implies that technology will play a big part. Leveraging technology platforms such as email, webcasts and internal platforms where materials and webinars/videos can be accessed allows for simple and easy to read and consume content. Another option to add a personal touch is the use ofVoice Memo,which shows up as an attachment in the email. When launched the recipient hears a voice to accompany the email.
We are always looking for ways to make our programs even better, so after the initial roll-out, it’s important to take time to check-in with your audience to understand what worked well and what could be better. Ask:Was the content right?Was it delivered in a manner that was easy to access and understand?Did it make a difference?Are the new hires in fact better prepared and able to be productive more quickly?Did it influence how they were able to effectively integrate into the organization?It’s important to stay objective and quickly make needed adjustments so the content stays fresh, relevant and ultimately achieves your business objectives.Any type of solid onboarding program is well worth the investment. Your new hires will feel welcomed and know you care enough to invest in educating them on how to get off to a good start and be successful within your company. Taking advantage of the information you provide is up to them!
While a lot of importance is given to virtual onboarding, very often the onboarding and the looking after of virtual teams takes a back seat.What is a virtual team? A virtual team is a team of people who work in concert to achieve the same goal. People who communicate primarily via electronic media and very often live in different parts of the region/country/world. They work across time zones and they rarely or never see each other.Over the next few years, we will be seeing a lot more virtual teaming. This means that a lot of us will be leading virtually, more and more teams.
The biggest challenge faced with virtual teams is the fact that they are not present on location. This, as we shall see, leads to several challenges. Let's take a look at these challenges and how they can be overcome. Challenges would fall under three groups – challenges faced by the individuals themselves, challenges faced by the team as a whole, and the challenges faced by the leader. On the individual level the first challenge would be the inability to read nonverbal cues. You drop in an email, you don’t get a reply immediately, and you don’t know what to think or to expect. When you don’t see someone, you don’t know if they can be trusted. You don’t know what to expect from someone you have never seen, and the sense of predictability is missing. People need to know that a person can be relied on before they can trust them. And the same goes with establishing a good rapport. You know what you are expected to do, but you miss out on the whole picture of the organization. Reliance on telephone and email leads to a time delay. People have different expectations of each other, and unless you know each other really well, you really don’t know if you can say anything, and this leads to a lot of underlying currents. For the Team, managing conflict is a challenge. Making decisions, who is making the decisions, and who is responsible for these decisions. Other points of concern are Expressing opinions, producing quality deliverables and generating innovative ideas.Leaders have to address all these challenges that we have just spoken about. And they themselves have their own set of challenges. Some of the questions leaders ask are: (Read all the points under ‘Leaders’.)
Here’s a fact that we probably did not realize. A whopping 90% of time is spent on preparing, delivering and following up on online communication with virtual teams. Lets see what we can do to reduce this time and make things easier for the team and the leader.
The first solution would be to balance your attention on results, processes and relationships. While this is something you would do with any team, it is more difficult with a virtual team, and equal importance should be given to all the three aspects – results, process and relationship. Now it may seem that we should only focus on results. But if you do not give attention to the process and to the relationships bit of this solution, you are not going to get any results.Foster trust based on performance: Earning trust is a key hurdle in virtual teams. What can a leader do to address this challenge? When you are working from a distance and are unable to build trust, trust is built on performance. Some factors that you can take into consideration are responding in a timely fashion, answering questions completely, is the individual being straight forward and consistent. You must keep in mind that everyone – regardless of culture, respond in the same way to these factors. Externalize your expectations: The team leader must set his expectations so that the team and the individuals within this team can work toward these expectations. Talk to the team about your decisions. Describe the situation clearly and explain your decisions regarding the situation. Explain why it is important. Talk about any concerns you may have, what issues you may be facing and what are the options that are available to them and always – ALWAYS make a ‘request’ and never force them to do something with a ‘demand’.How do you get more involved with your team and make more decisions with them without the stress of handling conflict, wasting time and losing control? Seek Maximum appropriate involvement in decision making rather than minimally involving people. There is always the worry that if you let a team member to decide on making a decision, he will be the owner of that decision. That is not true. It is your call as a team leader to decide whether that decision should finally be made and followed through and whether you should just decide on doing something else. Another thing that you can do is ask the team to come up with a decision, but let them know very very clearly, their constraints , and the framework that they have to work within.
Let's finally look at effective virtual feedback:When giving feedback to your virtual employees, always – always – always use the phone. There is too much room for misunderstanding in text messages and emails. Pick up the phone, give them a call, and give them your feedback.The feedback must be given on time. Don’t delay. Take the time out to make that call immediately or at the most – ASAP. Having said that, it is not going to be useful to the receiver if you are still angry, so you must focus on your behavior. Wait until you have cooled off. Do not use passive aggression. Use a collaborative approach. Give them a feeling that you are on their side or that you can work together in such a way that you both can work together toward a common goal. and finally offer assistance. The team member may not be aware of how a particular job needs to be done. Or she or he may have missed something. Offer assistance so he/she knows that you are on his side and are willing to take the time out to teach them how to do that particular job.
IMPROVE SALES FORCE READINESSVodafone, the world's second-largest mobile telecommunications company with a customer base of 150 million in India needed to train their dispersed workforce on the their USPs i.e. their Value Added Services and Vodafone Data Services. It was important for their customer care to have an in-depth knowledge of each of the services offered and the core selling points which would enable them to attract the customer base from worldwide. The company wanted to quickly accelerate this initiative using eLearning or the online training program. There were many reasons to consider the eLearning mode - firstly, it was more affordable than traditional classroom training, with savings of over 60%. Secondly, online courses could be taken in multiple sittings and was available 24x7, to better accommodate the busy schedule of the employees. Lastly, online training could take place anywhere and at any time - in a café, while travelling or at any place where the employee had an internet-accessible computer. CUSTOM CONTENT SOLUTIONSVodafone chose 24x7 Learning to customize eLearning modules that strengthened the product and services knowledge of the workforce. The first one was the 'Vodafone Induction Course' that introduced new employees to Vodafone's history as a global organization, what the brand stood for, the consumer and market insights and most importantly, the science behind the Telecom Structure at Vodafone. Acustomized eLearning character called Susan was introduced to take the learners through the course, mirroring a classroom instructor. The second eLearning module encompassed Vodafone's Value Added Services (VAS), designed with a series of animated episodes based on the daily life of a typical Indian family. Each character in the story was modeled on a regular telecom service user and each Value Added Service was mapped to a character. By weaving the learning into a story with characters that learners can relate to, the course built was highly relevant, interesting and engaging.IMPROVING RESULTS, REDUCING COSTS24x7 Learning built another course to train Vodafone employees on the Data Services offered by Vodafone. The course content revolved primarily around the latest 3G services offered by Vodafone, using a highly animated approach to communicate this content. Using conceptual graphics, scenarios and step-bystep animations, complex concepts were broken into simple, logical and easy to understand topics to help the learner absorb and retain the information. Additionally, checkpoints were included every few pages to reinforce recall and aid better learning. Each of these customized eLearning modules equipped the learner with necessary skills that they could relate to in the day-to-day scenarios they face.Other offerings from 24x7 Learning also include, 20+ business skill courses offered to more than 10000 users. These courses helped in effective training specific to business skills and competencies relevant to the industry.
Done well, virtual onboarding helps to build employee morale and accelerates time-to-competency, thereby increasing the likelihood that each new hire is engaged and effectively contributing to the organization’s goals. The business benefits of consistency and the cost savings derived from decreased reliance on people-led onboarding are both compelling. In addition, Marriott’s virtual onboarding environment exemplifies the leading practices we discuss in this research bulletin. These practices are as follows: • Enabling recruits to quickly, effectively, and confidently assimilate to company culture and become engaged employees. • Providing a global onboarding platform that is flexible and customized to a wide range of language and cultural requirements. • Providing easy access to learning resources, collaboration opportunities, and links to coworkers around the world. With its potential for increased engagement, virtual onboarding can serve as a major tool for containing the spiraling costs of new hire onboarding and managing significant financial losses resulting from the premature loss of new hires.
Global companies are looking for innovative ways to accelerate the onboarding of new hires to enhance retention, reduce time-to-competency, and help to contain substantial costs invested in the recruiting and hiring process. “Virtual onboarding” describes new-hire programs delivered over the web that eliminate the necessity for in-person new hire orientation and onboarding. It allows the new employee to become more readily assimilated to the corporate culture, with the advantage of consistent, standardized new hire messaging and content delivered anywhere across the globe. Virtual learning environments (VLEs) have the power to remotely enable virtual onboarding programs within a multigenerational and globally connected world. Virtual onboarding practices enable a shift from the traditional “one size fits all” model toward a recognition of the diversity of today’s global workforce. Virtual onboarding is a major tool for containing the spiraling costs of new hire onboarding. It is particularly well suited for global companies that want to provide consistent delivery of the company’s branding messages, cultural norms, and expectations while facilitating the socialization of a workforce widely dispersed over numerous countries and continents.