Remote is now a big deal.
Whether you’re a part of the OG work-from-anywhere movement, or are dragging your feet in the sand (potentially hypothetically as well as literally), the new remote landslide has forever changed and opened up entirely new ways of doing business. Why should onboarding be an exception?
Sadly it is. Onboarding is still largely percieved as a face-to-face exercise, with digital alternatives considered by many to be a temporary solution. We’re here to tell (and show) you how remote-onboarding is actually an opportunity that can scale and fasten your onboarding process without losing any of the emotional and non-verbal nuances – not a temporary solution to the pandemic!
But first, why should we care about onboarding? Effective onboarding can improve employee retention rates by 52%, time-to-productivity by 60%, and customer satisfaction by 53%, according to Deloitte. Companies simply cannot afford to be lackluster about onboarding.
The difference between satisfactory and killer remote-onboarding is actually as simple as hitting “record” 🔴🎥 on your meetings. Our loyal customers including Botmock are going to show you how!
In this article:
- Scalable onboarding that grows
- Self-serve and on-demand
- Remote onboarding that fosters holocracy
- Best meetings to tl;dv
Scalable onboarding that grows
Your most critical onboarding meetings can now be shared remotely with 1, 10, or 100 new hires! Rather than only sharing your typical employee handbook, you can share your company’s most relevant meetings with all of your new hires. Now your company’s treasured handbook is enriched with meetings that come loaded with context, non-verbal cues, and most importantly, your team’s personalities and faces! To put this into context:
- That sales discovery call? Record and share x5
- The user research session? Record and share x10
- The customer demo? Record and share x40
- Your team’s retro and review? Record and share with your new next 100 developers!
“With tl;dv’s remote onboarding, I had access to previously recorded user research sessions, market research sessions with prospects, and even team retros. I got to deepen my understanding of the team, role and company before starting!” – Aranzazu Figueruelo, UX Researcher @ tl;dv
Onboarding content that is self-service and on-demand!
Self-service and on-demand information is crucially importance to remote onboarding and in general, also facilitates memory-building. Onboarding that is presented in larger chunks is often overwhelming for your new employees and much information will not be retained. Our customers avoid this by with tl;dv! By recording crucial onboarding meetings, candidates can not only re-watch critical information again and again, but they can do so at their own pace, in their own time.
Additionally, they need not re-watch the entire onboarding meeting. Rather they can skip to any section with our timestamped highlights feature. This not only saves your candidate time but also reserves their mental energy for absorbing information, rather than searching for it.
However, navigating your library of tl;dved meetings isn’t the only area where simplicity and ease awaits you. These qualities are embedded throughout our core product, such as with our speed-reading feature that is designed to get you zooming through that onboarding meeting transcript and our ability to edit and add timestamped highlights during the meeting or after!
Remote onboarding that fosters holocracy
In remote, you can’t stumble upon your colleague from another department at the coffee station and learn about the upcoming launch, or casually enquire about the marketing strategy. Yet, in our interconnected world, especially in software, it’s crucial to provide new hires with fast access to all relevant information. This goes beyond simply reaching for technical proficiency, but also letting new hires get to know the processes, dynamics, and nuances across their team and the whole organization.
Through providing transparent access to a host of inter-departmental meetings, new hires and comfortably get to know their teammates and the whole organization. They are essentially, a fly on the wall!
1 out of 3 professionals have rejected a job offer after reading negative reviews about a company (culture) online. – Fractl.
But before your new hires make it through the rigorous onboarding schedule, you have to capture their interest first! As we all know, company culture is becoming increasingly important in a candidate’s decision to accept or reject a job offer. By providing your new hires (and existing employees too!) with a wealth of transparent and cross-department information, such as decision-making meetings, QBR, and customer interviews, you are both effectively onboarding your new candidates and also fostering a holocratic company culture. Such a company culture could impact employee-satisfaction and be a driver for future candidates joining your company.
So, exactly which meetings will 10x your remote onboarding?
Clearly, there is a better, faster, and more scalable way to handle remote-onboarding. But not all meetings are made equal. Some meetings simply carry more insights, more value, or are built-to-be-scaled. We’ve asked our users for their picks of the best meetings to share with new hires. We’ve broken it down according to the four main onboarding stages of social, product, technical, and industry onboarding.
Technical onboarding
Technical onboarding is the type that most team leaders focus on. It is the nuts-and-bolts of getting your new hire ready to perform in their position!
| Meeting type | What can new hires learn? 💡💡 |
|---|---|
| Technical Onboarding | Specific skills, theories & tasks related to the job. |
| Systems Onboarding | How to use the various systems, tools, and platforms used within the company and by the team. |
| Processes Onboarding | How to carry out various processes in the team or company, e.g., issue escalations or sprint-planning. |
| Team Workshops | Understanding the various roles, conflicts, problem-solving skills, responsibilities, skills, and KPIs of team members, and how these affect your role. |
Social onboarding
Many overlook social onboarding. This can be critical for a myriad of reasons, such as welcoming new team members that might be introverted or shy. Additionally, team harmony is critical for employee retention and productivity. Here are our customer’s top picks for the best meetings to tl;dv for a great social onboarding!
| Meeting type | What can new hires learn? 💡💡 |
|---|---|
| Dailies, Syncs, Weeklies | Understand team dynamics, personalities, & communication styles. |
| Lunch-N-Learns | An understanding of the existing organizational culture. |
| Quareterly Business Reviews | New hires can understand the wider organizational dynamics and KPIs. What are the company’s values? How do managers treat their employees? |
| Team Reviews, Retros | Understand the nitty-gritty of how a team ticks. What motivates them? How they handle conflict? How open is the feedback? There is a lot to unpack! |
Industry onboarding
A solid industry onboarding is a vital foundation for any new hire. Knowing the competitive landscape of your organization provides an understanding of what product features to prioritize, what customers think, and ultimately how to beat the competition. Such an understanding is the result of many ideas, competitors, customers, and other interal pieces of information. There are a few meetings that can facilitate the knowledge acquisition of all of these aspects including: industry events and webinars and company talks and presentations at those events, any company-wide business overview meeting such as QBRs and customer demos and sales pitches.
Product onboarding
Many companies will jump straight to onboarding new hires regarding their product or service. We agree. However, if you overlook an industry or social onboarding, their understanding of the product will likely be shallow. To turn your new hires into the product evangelists you aim, they must understand the competitive landscape, the people and teams who built the product, and how their role will add value to the product. Our customers speed up this process by tl;dving the following:
| Meeting type | What can new hires learn? 💡💡 |
|---|---|
| Customer Demos | How customers use your product. Any pain-points? How user-friendly is your product? |
| Sales/Vendor Pitches | An understanding of the product from a lead’s perspective. Which value-propositions do leads care about? What language do leads use? |
| Product Overviews | An in-depth understanding of the product, e.g., how it is made, run, maintained, and its value. |
| Product Syncs | Understand the product from an inter-departmental perspective (e.g. marketing or customer success). |
| Sales Discovery Calls | Different ICPs. What is a core or casual user? What motivates leads? Lead’s expectations. |
Remote onboarding doesn’t have to be second-rate! 😉
Through recording and sharing of your company’s most valuable meetings, you can supercharge your remote onboarding! tl;dvs that are akin to the leading on-demand and bite-sized educational courses facilitates knowledge acquisition and retention.
This is particularly important given average 1-2 years to reach full productivity. Startups may find this particularly burdensome, considering their need for rapid growth.
Remote onboarding doesn’t need to be inferior to face-to-face. Rather, it should and can be faster and more efficient that its in-person counterpart.
Want faster onboarding? Download our tl;dv Google Meet Chrome extension.
