How to onboard new employees while working remote during Covid-19

Try to remember the last time you started a new job. What were the things that worried you most? Mine were questions like will I make any friends? What kind of tasks will I get? How am I going to learn all this new information quickly so I can give some value?

If you are currently hiring or just hired a new employee, they are probably facing similar questions, and remote work makes it even harder because you are alone with your computer and suddenly you need to bring some value and make new friends, without even leaving your living room.

In September of this year, during the Covid pandemic, I hired a new member to my product team. I knew I had only one chance to make her experience a positive one and I wanted to make sure I’m doing everything I can to:

1. Transfer knowledge easily and quickly
2. Get her excited about the company and her new role
3. Make her feel part of a team

I only had about a week and a half to prepare before her first day, so I didn’t have much time to waste. I had to prepare her onboarding plan and all the content she’ll need in just a few days, while still tending to my day-to-day responsibilities. So similar to every challenge a Product Manager has to face, I made a plan, defined goals, and prepared everything while constantly thinking about her, my “user”, and how I would feel if I were in her shoes. In this post I’m going to break down my planning process and share with you the onboarding plan that I built.

The first day

The thing that I was worried about most was the first day, thinking that if the first day doesn’t go well it might leave a bad taste which would spoil her entire experience. The job market is so competitive these days and it was important that she’d know how happy we are that she joined us. The first day’s itinerary was comprised of first introducing all the important information about the company, like the company’s goals and vision, then we continued to talk a little bit about the product itself, the schedule for the rest of the week, and lastly introducing her to nice people which will make her feel welcomed. At the bottom of this post you’ll find the actual schedule for the first day, which I feel is relevant to any new employee, not just a product person.

Plan out the first two weeks

After I made sure the first day’s itinerary was ready, I set on to schedule important meetings for the first two weeks, specifically one-on-one meetings with key stakeholders from all over the company (developers, designers, researchers, managers, HR etc), repeating weekly meetings and lastly setting up time for more training on specific topics.

If I can leave you with one tip from this whole post let it be this one — don’t schedule more than 2–3 meetings a day. Tech culture has us sitting in meetings most of the day, we all hate it and suffer from it. For your new employee’s sake — ease them into it. An overload of meetings can quickly become tiring, frustrating and cause information overload.

Prepare an onboarding guidebook

Once I knew the skeleton of these two weeks was ready, it was time to take care of content. All that knowledge that you need to transfer to your new employee? Write it down in a document, presentation or whatever works for you, but make sure all the information is there, and not just the titles. Imagine that you’re writing a short guidebook — it should have all the instructions, step by step.

Writing it will help both of you in a few ways:

1. Make sure you covered everything
2. Allow your new employee to have reference material to go back to when they need it
3. Save time with future new employees
4. Allow your coworkers to add content they think is important to cover
5. Your new employee will have something to read if they have free time and you can’t make yourself available.

This was the most challenging part of the whole process because as I was writing more and more topics came up. I was also able to share my guidebook with other teammates and they helped me think of more subjects to include. After a few revisions and iterations, I was very happy with the result. When my new employee started we first went through all the information together, and then she could always look back at the guidebook when she needed it. The best part was that some of the content was also used to onboard new employees from different departments, which made the effort even more worthwhile.

Use documentation for self exploration

My next worry was what is she going to do when I’m busy? Although it could have been nice to clear out my schedule for training, that wasn’t realistic. I didn’t want to give her a project right away because I felt that the first couple of weeks should be for absorbing knowledge rather than actually creating something. So this is when I started to come up with a list of resources for self exploration.

My list consisted of articles, documents and books. The topics were:

• Methodologies she needs to learn — to make sure she knows the basics of the processes we use, for example agile product management and scrum planning.
• Company documentation — If you don’t have official documentation you can use PRDs and product specs.
• Enriching content — Books and articles about Product Management, time management, OKRs etc.
• Competitor analysis and reviews

This proved to be a really great addition to the onboarding plan. Having a self exploration list that you curate yourself helps your new employee understand what you expect them to know, and allows them to easily find things to do when they have time available while making sure this information is relevant to their new work.

The buddy system

After all the content was taken care of, I wanted to make sure that the social elements are also taken care of. I wanted to make sure she has a friend in the company no matter what, and that’s where the buddy system came in. Assign your new team member a buddy, someone who is not part of your team that is nice, easy going and welcoming. A buddy provides moral support during the first few crucial weeks by introducing the new employee to staff members and showing them around their new workplace. If you’re lucky enough to still be able to go to a physical office, a buddy would be the person that will show you the ins and outs of a company, like where to get the best coffee, which bathrooms are the cleanest and where is the best place to eat lunch. But if like me you’re working remotely, the buddy will just be a friend to your new employee, someone who can answer questions that your new employee might not feel comfortable to ask you. Before assigning a buddy, talk to your buddy candidate and make sure they are on board and have time to devote to this, after all you are asking them to give up some of their valuable time for this. Ideally, the buddy and your new employee will meet every day for the first week (or two) for at least 30 minutes, schedule that in advance!

Make yourself available

My last concern was making sure she feels I’m here for her, especially when working remote. As your new employee is trying to make sense of everything, you best remember that every second of your time is super valuable to them. My advice is to start and finish each day with a 15–30 minutes call, even if it’s just to ask them how they are or how their day went. Be there, show them you care, and encourage them to use this time to ask questions.

Retrospective

Like a good Product Manager, every process needs to end with a retrospective. At the end of her first week I scheduled a longer meeting to summarize the week and ask for feedback. I wanted to know what she thinks went well? What was missing? I made sure I’d touch on all the points I shared here to get feedback about everything, from the first day schedule, to the schedule of the entire week, the materials I prepared, the people she met, and my expectations of her. I also used this opportunity to ask her if there was something she wanted to go deeper into next week, so I can make sure the schedule I’ve set will cover everything we need. The feedback I got from her also helped me understand that I was able to achieve my goals for her first week, and to understand what I can do better for future employees.

I hope that you find my breakdown of the process helpful. Below you’ll find my suggested schedule for the first day. If you have any questions or if you have any other ideas to onboard new employees during remote work, please share it with me in the comments below.