Hybrid Employee Onboarding Program: Things to Consider

Things to Consider for Hybrid Employee Onboarding

A hybrid workforce refers to a hybrid work model in which some employees work on-site while others prefer to work from home. Many companies allow their employees to work from home on certain days per month. Even though the debate between on-site versus working from home is ongoing, it is certain that a hybrid or blended workforce is here to stay and will make its way into the future as well.

With employees working from home for a variety of reasons, how do you integrate new hires into the company culture? Additionally, new employees should be explained their roles and responsibilities, code of conduct, rules and policies, organizational structure, etc., to speed up their onboarding process.

Onboarding has five main goals: impression, introduction, integration, immersion and independence. An onboarding process takes place gradually as follows: orientation, role training and ongoing development. I talked about this in detail in another article describing how an LMS can help deliver an incredible onboarding experience.

Beyond paperwork, eLearning can take your onboarding process to a new level. Here are some elements of an effective onboarding program for a hybrid workforce.

Hybrid employee onboarding journey

An eLearning onboarding journey can include most of the following:

• Welcome kit
• Icebreaker activities
• Senior management speech
• Mission, vision, formats, organizational structure of the company, etc.
• Individual courses or compliance resources, policies, code of conduct, etc.
• Motivational extracts
• Team games
• Forum that allows new recruits to ask questions to seniors
• Live webinar from management or seniors
• Employee Feedback
• Facilitator support

Let’s see how these elements help transform a boring and routine onboarding experience.

Hit the ground running

As soon as the offer letter is submitted, the new employee can be introduced to the induction section of the training course. This welcome module may include the company’s mission, vision, formats, organizational structure and roles and responsibilities manual. These could be divided into short modules that the new employee can complete at times that suit them. For the recruit, this starts the process of getting to know the company and connecting with it.

Until now, and yet so close

An effective onboarding program makes distance an irrelevant factor, whether the new employee works in remote branches or from home. This is an opportunity to build connections from day one. Give a step-by-step overview of the head office, factory, warehouse and other workplaces.

Whether it’s a new customer or a new recruit, we tend to connect with the face of the company. The values, integrity and culture of leaders reflect the perception of the company. Therefore, top management speech and motivational quotes play an important role in making the employee feel comfortable at the workplace. Live sessions with immediate or senior leaders can have a huge impact.

Additionally, the first few days are crucial for briefing new employees on policies related to compliance, code of conduct, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), etc. This not only defines the company standards that the employee must follow, but also tells them what kind of place they are in.

The initial part of the learning path meets two major objectives of the integration course: impression and introduction.

Collaborative spaces

Solitude and collaboration are two learning behaviors, and each of us has shades of both. The work is done as a team even if everyone works independently on their respective tasks. Integration with your team members is best achieved through icebreaker activities and team games moderated by a facilitator. These can be punctuated by courses on policies, compliance, company profiles and management messages.

A virtual reality environment is best suited to an integration process interspersed with games and interactions.

These elements contribute greatly to advancing the third integration objective, integration.

interactions

In addition to live sessions with executives, question-and-answer sessions can take place via an official forum. New employees can ask relevant questions. This also gives them the opportunity to share their feedback on the training program and any other.

Role and skills training

The goals of integration, immersion and independence are supported by competency-based training. Once roles and responsibilities are explained, sample resources and reference materials can be added to the learning path.

They say that by teaching, we learn and we understand. An authoring tool allows the new employee to create courses on various new topics. This promotes collaborative learning.

Onboarding is not limited to administrative tasks or the initial introduction. This results in helping the new employee complete the task independently with minimal supervision. Include task-specific learning capsules to complete the onboarding process.

Conclusion

The hybrid workforce onboarding process may involve a learning journey spanning a few weeks or even months.

Employees who have exceptional onboarding experiences are more likely to feel satisfied with their workplace. An agile onboarding training program is a necessity, as it is a powerful tool to maintain team cohesion distributed across the globe. This will in turn lead to improved productivity, engagement and therefore the company’s bottom line.

Create an unparalleled onboarding experience for your hybrid workforce with personalized eLearning coursesLMS and/or LXP.

At Tesseract Learning, we leverage our powerful learning platform, KREDO, to create efficiencies throughout the training lifecycle and deliver optimal learning experiences. We provide end-to-end execution of the complete learning and development cycle as well as learning consultancy. Our authoring tool, Prodient.io is one of the best eLearning authoring tools that embodies ease, effectiveness and efficiency in eLearning course development.

Contact me or leave a comment below to learn more about our services and how we can help you.