Your Virtual Onboarding Checklist

With many of us now working from home, successfully managing pre-employment screening and onboarding in a remote world is critical as we look at different ways for new hires to feel connected to their new organisation when they can’t be physically with their new team.

4 Cs of Onboarding: Compliance, Context, Culture and Connection

We often focus on the critical Compliance elements when we’re looking to bring new people into a business, such as pre-employment checks, referencing and DBS checks or sending an offer letter and contract and checking it is returned. It’s often about verifying identity, ensuring people are who they say they are and looking at their background history etc. Pre Covid, this would have been done when you were bringing someone physically into the organisation, but there is now a lot more reliance on doing these checks remotely and earlier in the process by using technology.

Read our blog post on managing compliance remotely, with our integrated partner and identity specialists, First Advantage.

It’s important to establish a Connection with new hires before they start working with you and convey your organisation’s Culture before they join to get a sense of what it’s like to work for the company. The Context - when a new hire does join their expectations are already set and they know what’s going to happen during their first few weeks.

With most of us working remotely, it’s even more critical to have these 4 areas in place before someone joins an organisation - and to keep the momentum going after they’ve joined.

• 30% of people continue to look for jobs even after they’ve accepted an offer. (Cezanne HR Onboarding Survey)
• A good onboarding process can decrease the time to settle for new hires by 30%. It can improve new hire retention by 82% and increase early productivity by 70%. (Brandon Hall Group)

Instant Responses with Online Onboarding

Remote working and hiring have shone a light on the importance of onboarding a new hire (requesting references, sending offer letters and contracts and being able to accept them all online) and making sure they’re made to feel welcome even before their first day.

Online Onboarding is a key component of Jobtrain that allows candidates to view documents and accept them online, alongside Online Referencing and digital signatures. Bringing these steps online ensures a fast pace is maintained even when we’re all working remotely.

Bridging the Gap from Offer Acceptance to Start Date

What do candidates do after they’ve accepted your offer and are waiting to start? As we mention above, up to 30% of people continue to look for jobs even after accepting an offer – and if Onboarding is not done well, there can often be an employee turnover of up to 20% in the first 45 days of starting a new job. (Click Boarding)

Welcome Hub

Using these insights, our Welcome Hub was developed, providing a facility for organisations to bridge the gap from offer acceptance to start date. Welcome Hub allows companies to share all those exciting elements of starting a new role. A variety of information can be included, such as a message from the line manager, videos or photos of the team or information for the first day. It removes any anxiety candidates might have felt if they didn’t hear from their new employer after accepting a contract and ultimately helps to make new hires feel part of the team before they’ve even joined.