[Podcast] What's Driving The Need for Virtual Onboarding?

Gallup research says 88% of organizations don't do a great job of onboarding new hires. This leads to lower employee engagement, which leads to higher turnover. And that's expensive.

Stephanie Goodell, Senior Talent Development Leader joined InSync's Jennifer Hofmann and Karen Vieth, to to discuss why we NEED great onboarding.

The answer to the WHY is simple: Excellent virtual onboarding retains talent. HOW to create great onboarding is a more complex question. What are the steps you can take to create a successful virtual onboarding experience?

Stephanie not only answered that question - but her enthusiasm about new hire engagement and creating a supportive, ongoing onboarding experience made me excited about the concept as well.

Stephanie answered questions like: how do organizations attract, engage, develop and retain top talent? And why is onboarding is such an important part of that talent development lifecycle.

Something that was new to me: Stephanie discussed what she calls the three C’s of onboarding: culture, context and credibility and why these are a must for organizations conducting employee onboarding.

You’ll walk away with simple steps you can take now to make sure that new employees are engaged with 30, 60 and 90-day onboarding plans, and what you should consider when designing virtual onboarding experiences.

Don’t miss this informative Podcast. 

Listen now! View the full transcript of this episode, below.  

Modern Learning on the Air Podcast

What's Driving the Need for Virtual Onboarding?

August, 2022

Welcome to Modern Learning on the Air, the InSync Training Podcast. In conversation with some of the top leaders and thinkers in the modern virtual learning space. We will learn about the latest virtual classroom techniques, creating training initiatives and virtual training best practices that will engage and empower your teams, colleagues and learners. Enjoy the show

KAREN:                                

Hello everyone. I’m Karen, Vice President of Virtual Learning Services here at InSync Training. Welcome to Modern Learning on the Air. Today I will be speaking with Jennifer, Founder and President of InSync Training and Stephanie, Certified Virtual Facilitator and Producer. To find out why excellent virtual onboarding retains talent and the steps you can take to create successful virtual onboarding training for your organization. Welcome Jennifer. Welcome Stephanie. First, let’s just take a minute to introduce yourselves and then tell us what you think is driving the need for virtual onboarding. Jennifer, let’s start with you.

JENNIFER:                          

Thanks Karen. So, I’m Jennifer and I’m the Founder of InSync Training and we started in the year 2000 as 100% virtual team. Back in that time, it wasn’t cool to be a virtual team. But now, with a global economy and Covid kind of accelerating a hybrid workforce, the need to start off on the right foot and engage your workforce from day one is even more critical. And I’m a big advocate that we can do that in the virtual space.

STEPHANIE:                       

I would totally agree, Jennifer. Hi everyone, it’s Stephanie and in addition to my work in the learning environment at InSync, I am a Senior Talent Development Leader and I love to ask this question. How do we attract, engage, develop and retain top talent? And when I think about that, onboarding is such an important part of that talent development lifecycle. And so, I’m passionate about onboarding and the reason why I think that there’s this new need, or increased need, for virtual onboarding is definitely what Jennifer said, of course we all know what’s been going on across the globe, but let’s think about the scale also that you can have by designing a truly effective virtual onboarding. As organizations grow, you can’t always take the time to be in person when, you know, and maybe there were 2-3 people who were onboarding at time, sure, but now as teams grow and there might be 20 or 30 people onboarding at the same time, really the virtual environment is the best place to be.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, thank you Jennifer and thank you Stephanie. We’re so happy to have both of you on to discuss your expertise in this area, and you know, behind the scenes I did a little bit of research and as you mentioned, but also Gallop Research indicates, 88% of organizations do onboarding kind of wrong, right? And what they were also saying is, we only really have one chance to make that first impression, and that strategic onboarding process as you mentioned Stephanie, is the best way to kick start employee engagement, especially with our remote and hybrid workplaces. And as a remote working since 2000, I took a little bit of time to reflect, just upon my own experience of my onboarding with my prior company, and then as I came to InSync 16 years ago, and what I really like boiled down for me, is strong connections. The strong connections that helped kind of turn my remote working into working, you know, without isolation, working connected. And it’s funny, because so often I am asked, gosh Karen, don’t you feel alone while you’re working in your home office? And my answer is always, no! I work with more individuals across the globe today and speak with more professionals in my day-to-day job, you know, for the past 20 years, than I ever did inside of a brick-and-mortar building. So, Jennifer, you mentioned, you know, obviously you’ve ran InSync Training for over 20+ years, but you mentioned you’ve worked with only a remote team for that 20+ years. What’s the secret to making these connections that I mentioned through the onboarding process?

JENNIFER:                          

It’s interesting, out of everything I’ve done in my career, probably the thing I’m most proud of is the success of this virtual team. What we’ve always promoted here is independent work and independent thought, but a comfort level with being interdependent on your virtual coworkers. So, those concepts might feel contradictory, but I need to know that our virtual facilitators and our producers and our designers can make their deadlines, can be there when clients need them, can do the prep that they need to make our clients successful, no matter where they are in the world, no matter what time of day it is for me, without having to check in on them. So, that’s what I need as a manager, but what they need as contributing team members is the confidence that there’s somebody there to back them up; if technology doesn’t work, if they have a question, if there’s a personal emergency that they need to address. And we connect all those people through various channels. It used to be Skype. This year we’ve migrated to MS Teams, but we have different channels. We have a watercooler channel where we just connect and say Happy Birthday and Happy Graduation, and I hope you’re feeling better. We have an SOS channel for when things really go south and we need to help our clients. We have reading channels. We have a weight loss channel. Just ways to connect the way we would in a face-to-face environment. And I think that we’ve made connections in our virtual team, that are as strong as, or maybe even stronger, than you would have in a face-to-face environment. It’s, the employee and contractor engagement at the InSync team is very, very high and we’ve never worked together in a collocated space. It’s, the engagement level is what we need to start out with and what we need to maintain, even after the onboarding process is over. Even after the orientation process is over. People need to feel connected.

KAREN:                                

So true, connection, engagement, you know, a couple of things that you mentioned, just the connection with the technology, the personal connections that we make, you know, through technology, outside of technology, and then you also mentioned a couple of things that I really think, Stephanie, you could give us a little bit more insight on; Jennifer mentioned as part of these connections we make them through an orientation to the organization or the onboarding process within the organization, and often I hear onboarding and orientation sort of mentioned…

JENNIFER:                          

They’re interchangeable.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, interchangeable in the conversation, and I’m curious, Stephanie, are they the same thing?

STEPHANIE:                       

I think you’re so right on that. I hear them using interchangeably too, and I’m excited they’re very different. Orientation, you can think of it as having a definitive start and stop. So, it’s typically a day or maybe it’s even a week, but there is a start and stop to it. Onboarding really is that entire first year. If you look back at your own experience in any role, that first year is very keeping your head above water. And trying to understand your role in the organization and the culture and all of those things. So, that onboarding really is that first full year. I’d also say that orientation should be one-time tasks, you mentioned getting up to speed with your computer, right? That should be a one-time orientation, or filling out your benefits paperwork or getting a tour of the building or understanding how MS Team works and those social channels. That should be a one-time orientation. Onboarding is something that builds on your knowledge. So, think about culture of your organization. That can’t be learned in a day. There’s no start and stop to that, but it’s incremental knowledge that builds over time, and that’s really the difference, and both of these are important to the new hire, and both of them are important to the organization. That’s really where they intersect.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, that’s interesting. The start and stop is really important when we think about orientation. It’s that one-time task. I love that and then the onboarding kind of builds throughout and it’s what builds the culture and what really keeps people, right? Now, one of the other things that I…

JENNIFER:                          

I’d like to interrupt here, because something just came to my mind, and I’m sorry, but Stephanie, what do you think about the idea that orientation is really the HR part of the process, and the onboarding is led by the managers and the supervisors and the mentors?

STEPHANIE:                       

I, I do think that some organizations are set up that way. But there are things that are organizational orientation. So, think about, let’s go the computer pieces, right, so, the computer, understanding your technology that you have in order to do your job can be complicated, but once you know it, you’re kind of done with it. So that could be everything from getting the computer to turning it on, to understanding which collaborative technologies are being used, to where are the files. So, HR isn’t necessarily going to know those things. Those might be more specific to your team or your unit. But again, they’re one-time things. So, it’s a little bit of both, Jennifer.

JENNIFER:   Thanks.

KAREN:                                

So, when we talk about the orientation separate from onboarding, let’s talk about the first 30 days, the first 60 days, the first 90 days of an individual coming in to onboard. So, I kind of understand with those one-time tasks, you know, maybe that first week of orientation is really getting yourself set up for payroll, for health benefits, all of those pieces, those one-time tasks, but going back to the discussion Jennifer started with, as far as the connections and that building interpersonal communication within your team, what do you see, Stephanie, in terms of to describe that first 30-day experience?

STEPHANIE:                       

Sure, so, I want to go back to this sense of belonging, because we can’t underestimate the importance of it. I’ve done a lot of research on this and what I see is that belonging intersects a number of, let’s call them employee experiences. The first one is that belonging is connected to employee engagement and that sense of belonging really needs to start early in an employee’s experience with a company or an organization, and what that’s important is because if somebody doesn’t feel a sense a belonging, they are more likely to leave the organization quickly and that costs tons of money. It costs so much money to have a new employee leave an organization, but it also means that projects are going to be running behind. Because all that time that the employee has been there, whether it’s a month or two months or six months, if they leave, then projects are going to get behind. So, there’s a big impact to the organization when somebody doesn’t feel engaged or belonging. But belonging also intersects diversity and inclusion. And you’ll find a lot of organization moving from the acronym of diversity equity and inclusion to DEIB, adding belonging on to it, because it’s something that’s foundational to all of us and our experience in organizations. And the third thing about belonging is that it’s also a part of helping employees avoid burnout. And people who are burnt out often need organizations. So, across the board, in those first 30 days, helping build that sense of belonging, that engagement and connecting, saves the organization money and advances projects faster. So, that 30 days is a true opportunity to do that. I’m reading this great book right now called the first 90 days. And if you extended out that experience a couple of more months of a new hire and a manager, what you would see is that employee is only taking value from the organization in those first 30 days. It’s really hard for them to offer something of substance that early on with an organization. So that contribution doesn’t really start happening until 2½ or 3 months into their experience. And at that point, they really are contributing ideas. They understand the context. They understand their role in the organization. They have established credibility. And so, now you’re talking 5 or 6 months in that that investment in the employee is net zero, right? So, the first few months they are taking value, the next few months they start adding value and now you’re 5 or 6 months in that it evens out and the employee is really up to speed and contributing. So, if you can look at those first 30 days and figure out how to get that employee to have a higher degree of self-efficacy, then again, it goes back to productivity, bottom line and all of those things that are connected in the employee experience.

KAREN:                                

That is so interesting, and so profound, to think about that 30 days is kind of they’re taking value from the company, and it takes till that 90 days to where we’re evening out to where it is a give and take, and then that 6-month area where we’re really at that net zero and we’re ready to get some other value from that individual, I love that.

JENNIFER:                          

And actually, if we can explain that to new hires in the beginning that this is what the expectations are, maybe it will take a little bit of pressure off. I don’t, I’m not expected to perform at day 5, even if I’ve come into this with experience. So that’s really interesting.

STEPHANIE:                       

Jennifer, I would add to that that at that 30-day mark, the conversation between a manager and a new hire should be around something that I like to call a quick win, and this is, again, helping build that self-efficacy with the new hire. So, giving them a project that is, they’ve got the context for it, they’ve got the credibility for it, they’ve got the skills for it, and it’s going to be a quick win for them to help them establish themselves in the organization. They’re going to be more confident and others are going to be confident in them. And so, that’s a really important part of that early expectation to conversation.

JENNIFER:                          

That contributes to your concept of belonging, which is new to me as far as the inclusive conversation, the idea of belonging. What do the team members, the existing team members, how do they contribute to this sense of belonging for the new person?

STEPHANIE:                       

Social onboarding is super important. I like to talk about the 3 Cs of onboarding. So, culture, context and credibility and I mentioned credibility a few times. That credibility isn’t just around a manager helping a new higher be seen as credible by other leaders in the organization, that is also making social connections in the organization early on. So, it’s such an important part of onboarding.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, that’s just, that’s really amazing to hear you talk about those 3 components and the social aspect I think we forget about that, right? Especially as the world changed, right, with the pandemic and individuals were used to doing onboarding face to face and now most organizations are moving towards this virtual onboarding. Now, when we think about remote teams, how do we really ensure engagement in this new global virtual hybrid world? Jennifer, I’m going to lead to you for that question first, and I’m sure, Stephanie, you have something to add in as well. Again, remote team members, how do we ensure this feeling of belonging, outside of maybe the water cooler that you mentioned, Jennifer?

JENNIFER:                          

Well, I do think that no matter where the employee is located, that on day 1 there should be some virtual experiences that set the expectation for how we do business in this organization. Even if you’ve got 6 new hires together in one place, let them connect with their teams virtually as well as face to face, so they used to what a hybrid environment looks like.

STEPHANIE:                       

What I’d love to add to that is that there are some very simple things that you can do to make sure that people are engaged. If you go back and you think about if you were onsite in a job and there was somebody new or you walked into a room or into a meeting, you wouldn’t sit quietly and not make eye contact with anybody and say nothing. You would engage people. You would say hello. You would ask about their day. You might, if you were having lunch, you might ask what they’re having and learn something about their culture or their home life. That is also true in the virtual world. I think so often people walk into these virtual settings and everybody waits until there is a definitive start to the meeting, when that time could be spent engaging people. It’s not hard.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, I think you’re right and I think it really boils down to how we design, right, those 30 days, those 60 days, and those 90 days. So, I’m curious, do either of you have any thoughts in terms of what we should consider as we are designing this virtual onboarding experience?

JENNIFER:                          

Well, Stephanie is definitely the HR expert here and that expertise is certainly coming through, but from my perspective, I think we need to create experiences, not an event. Like Stephanie said, it’s not over at any particular time, it’s an ongoing process. Find a way to bring in mentors early, and maybe if the new hire can identify who they might want to mentor them after some kind of social engagement experience, that would bring more meaning to that relationship. I think that the onboarding process should be led by managers and supervisors as much as possible, as opposed to sent to training and sent to HR and all those different things. The meaningful stuff should be led by the team. So, find ways to include the entire team in meaningful ways, not just with virtual cake at the end of day 1. I think in this hybrid workforce, consider a blended learning campaign process with infographics and videos, informal videos from other team members with their onboarding experiences for example. With formal training inserted where it needs to be with debrief opportunities and make that roadmap available to the new hire as part of their day 1, so they know what to expect. Create as many tools as you can that’s used during onboarding that can be used later on; job aids, interview formats, infographics, reminders, anything that they can put in a tool kit and we can say, remember when we discussed this in onboarding, let’s grab that tool, and that can help us. That way, nothing is new or seems like it was forgotten 6 months later when all this information was just coming at us and we were trying to remember it all.

STEPHANIE:                       

Jennifer, orientation, onboarding, walking into a new workplace is like drinking from a firehose. And so many of us have experienced that, because we are trying to get all of this HR paperwork done. It’s very confusing at times and we’re trying to get our computer set up and if there is any pause there, it could be so frustrating. So, I think you’re exactly right in that answer of use that blended approach. Okay, we are a community of learners and we know how important blended approaches are. I think checklists are wildly helpful. So, add that to the job aids. All of these in my mind also help with the pace. And when that pace is overwhelming, if a new employee can take a step back and then jump back in, or they have that job aid that allows to have some just in time learning, then it’s going to be less overwhelming for them. So, if we’ve got manager involvement, we’ve got high quality learning materials, we’ve got that road map and we’ve built out those social connections and a sense of belonging, then we’re far more likely to have a new employee that is going to be engaged, connected and it goes back to the question of, how do we retain that top talent.

KAREN:                                

Yeah, as a learning and development professional for the past 20-some years, I mean, what I’m hearing you both say is what we say in training, right? Focus on those microlearning assets that individuals can then use later on the job. We might introduce them during the orientation or during the onboarding, but really, where learning is going to stick, right, is when they can actually pull on one of those assets to use later on, back on the job. But it’s what we do up front to create those connections, that sense of belonging, that inclusion and the orientation of where those materials are, so that they know where to grab, right when it comes time for a question or the checklist that they might need to do the work that they are doing.

Well, Jennifer, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. If you’re someone out there as a listening looking to gain expertise in designing, delivering, supporting your onboarding journey for the modern learning of today’s global, virtual and hybrid world, tune in to our blog at blog.insynctraining.com to get tips and tricks for getting virtual onboarding right. We have blogs, infographics, checklists, tools and a Virtually There webinar dedicated to this topic. We hope to see you all August 24, 2022, where Jennifer will share in her free Virtually There webinar, The First 30 Days, Maximizing New Hire Engagement in the Hybrid Workplace. If you aren’t able to attend, don’t fret, you can access the recording on InSynctraining.com under resources. We also have a team workshop that can help you design your onboarding campaign. Let us help you design and deliver your virtual onboarding journey.

Again, thank you so much for coming today to InSync Trainings Modern Learning on the Air Podcast, and be sure to join us next month for our next podcast. Visit insynctraining.com for all things virtual training.

Are you looking to improve your onboarding strategy? Read about our expert seminar workshop Getting Virtual Onboarding Right - Maximizing New Hire Engagement in the Hybrid Workplace, which explores how to design a virtual onboarding program, how to connect remote new hires to the rest of the organization, and how to make the first 30 days on the job positive, memorable, and energizing.

Our Expert Seminar Series includes 12 trending workshop topics for up to 12 people in your organization. Purchase 5 workshops and the 6th workshop is free! Click on the image below to learn more.