In April 2020, people2people questioned senior managers representing over 160,000 employees and 300 career seekers across Australia to sense-check key workforce areas to understand how employers and candidates were feeling about the Australian labour market during Covid-19.

There is an art to successfully onboarding and engaging new hires, so to assist you, I have reached out to several candidates and clients who successfully gone through this process and compiled their five top tips on how managers can navigate the virtual onboarding minefield.

1 - Make them feel welcome. Encourage people to reach out to your new hire to introduce themselves; a quick email saying hello can be more powerful than you think.
Book in some time for the immediate and wider teams to have some online face time where the conversation doesn’t need to be work related.

2 – Create an on-boarding check list of tasks that they need to complete; some may need to be completed in the first week, others over the first month, etc.
Make sure that the resources they require are easily accessible in order to allow them full autonomy in completing the check list. You may include work health and safety training, systems training, marketing and communications training, and telephone, video conferencing and social media use.
I’d encourage you to prompt different team members to assist with different training so that your new hire has interactions with different people over their first month at least.

3 - Ensure that there are daily and weekly catch ups on what their goals are and following that, their highlights and achievements. It’s good to keep direction and accountability, whilst remaining positive.

4 – Ask them ‘R U OK?’ and ask them regularly. It can be daunting moving jobs at the best of times, so imagine how anxious people would be joining a new team from home without friendly check ins!

5 – Think about a Buddy or Mentor program which will give the new hire someone they can bounce ideas or mention any issues they are facing. Sometimes it’s nice to hear other people’s challenges and know you’re not on your own. It could be someone in a different team, but similar or higher position.

With 64% of surveyed employees feeling they were lacking engagement and 50% concerned for their wellbeing, please remember to check in with your staff more often. New hires are equally important.

I hope these tips have helped and given you some ideas on how to maximize engagement. If I can be of any assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on 03 9098 7433 . I am also contactable on aimee.burton@people2people.com.au .

Interested to know how your organisations Covid-19 response stacks up against your competitors? To request your copy of the people2people Workforce Snap Survey, click here .

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