Even at that, it’s unfortunate that most organizations still struggle to deliver the best onboarding to their new hires. In case you don’t know, one of the best ways to welcome new employees to an organization is through the remote onboarding process.

In today’s world, remote work has started to gain a lot of popularity among organizations. And to be frank, this modern workstyle offers tons of amazing benefits, such as providing employees with the opportunity to achieve a better life & work balance. That’s not all; remote work also helps employees to eliminate the daily commuting to work, including transportation costs.

Currently, some companies are already taking advantage of the remote onboarding process to welcome their new team members. Unfortunately, as with conventional onboarding, most organizations still struggle to deliver a great remote onboarding process. In the rest of this post, I’ll be sharing with you some of the challenges that organizations encounter when trying to deliver an effective remote onboarding process.

Here are the 6 most common challenges of the remote onboarding process

1.    Creating a sense of belonging before the first day of onboarding

When it comes to organizing the remote onboarding process, one of the most common challenges that organizations encounter is the ability to help the new hires create a sense of belonging before the first day of onboarding. In case you don’t know, isolation is one of the many issues attached to working remotely. With that, it means getting to meet new team members for the first time can be pretty challenging. So, the question is; what is the best way to make new hires feel like they belong before the first day of the remote onboarding process?

Although many organizations struggle to address this issue, one of the best ways to go about it is to create a buddy system – this involves assigning each of the new hires to the existing workplace members, called buddies. Another way to address this challenge is to organize video calls, letting all the new employees get familiar with each other before the first day of onboarding.

2.     Having a lengthy remote onboarding process

Another common challenge of remote onboarding is lengthy or disorganized processes. In case you don’t know, if the remote onboarding process is poorly organized, it can bring about negative consequences for both the new hires and the employer. First, this could lead to a lower productivity level for the organization. It could also lead to a high rate of employee turnover.

That’s not all; a lengthy or disorganized remote onboarding process could also result in several other things, such as lower employee morale, as well as lower levels of employee engagement. Bottom line: when trying to deliver remote onboarding at your organization, ensure that the programs are organized in such a way that engages the new hires, bringing out the best in them.

3.    Monotonous programs

Having monotonous programs is another common challenge of the remote onboarding process. When you keep on rolling out the onboarding program, in the same way, this is monotonous. Unfortunately, that could make the onboarding process pretty boring for the new hires.

Here’s a quick explanation; imagine just rolling out documents about your business model and processes, remotely, to your new hires. There’s a possibility that some of them might end up not opening the material until the day of resumption to the work. And if this happens, such employees will inevitably misbehave.

No doubt, rolling out documents to your new hires is a good move. However, you can always make the move better by engaging them even after dropping the PDFs. One way to do that is by giving them a quiz at the end of the onboarding program and rewarding them if they end up passing it.

4.    Access to the right technology or tools

For you to achieve a successful remote onboarding process, there’s a need for your new hires to access the right technology. Yeah, the new hires can tell you they can work remotely but not have the right tools to perform the job. This happens a lot, so the question is – how do you address this issue.

How do you provide your new hires with the right support for the onboarding program? Are you just going to assume that they all have all it takes (technology) to perform their job functions? This is where the challenge lies, and to address this issue, one of the many ways to do that is to support the new employees with the appropriate tools.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the tools, since they are many moles away from the company. Instead, you can support them with money to buy all the necessary tools to make the remote onboarding process a smooth one.