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Work: Onboarding Best Practices

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Tags: #onboarding #work #interviews

Onboarding Best Practices.md

Reference

• https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/2020-08-31-remote-onboarding/
• https://twitter.com/rothgar/status/1296911972215058432
• https://twitter.com/rothgar/status/1296911975314677760

Problems

The problems I’ve had on-boarding remotely are

• knowing what is expected of me
• figuring out social norms and process
• building trust and empathy
• understanding current WIP and context
• getting frequent feedback for how I’m doing
• finding who to ask
• remembering everything

Best Practices

1. Equipment, accounts, access should all be setup BEFORE day 1. If someone starts work without these things you need to make that process better first.

Before day 1 your manager should reach out to provide their email address and cell number in case you have problems. An email/text/phone call with what to expect can go a long way to make the process better

1. First thing should be a video call with your manager. Ideally they will be available for questions for at least the first ¹⁄₂ of the day. If you run into problems they should be able to take action right away and not when they’re done with meetings

2. The manager should prepare a list of things to read in your first week. Wiki, chat rooms, code, etc.

This list should be explained during the first call and sent as an email to reference over the first few weeks.

One of those links should be documented expectations. Not informal, verbal information. Documented publicly to make sure everyone is on the same page (new hire, manager, co-workers)

Ideally every company >100 people will have an up to date website with org chart information, user aliases, email, phone numbers, etc. This is going to be crucial to new hires to understand how the company works and who they can talk to

Bonus points if the website has a way for the user to bookmark people and add private notes (this helps them remember context on when they met people) and name pronunciation.

Amazon has phonetool with a couple of those features. Disney had rostr. WDAS had ohana

You need to invite the new hire into your #YELLING channel too. Maybe not day 1. But it should happen by day 3.

1. Introduction meetings should be already planned and scheduled with co-workers and teams. Manager should send an introduction email for each meeting to introduce you and say what everyone on the meeting does

e.g. This is team X Adam is the manager Jill is the Sr developer

1. Manager should schedule a follow-up call for Wed or Thurs to check in and have a casual chat. Some people aren’t comfortable asking questions via chat in new teams/companies.

2. There should be an onboarding buddy which has a call day 1 or early day 2. They should daily chat with the new hire for the first ~1-2 weeks to see if there’s anything they can help with.

3. Optionally if onboarding a developer it’s nice to open onboarding tickets in jira (or whatever you use) so they can be familiar with the workflows/planning and the team can track their onboarding process and help if they’re stuck.

4. End of week 1 or 2 there should be a team building/casual call with as many people on the immediate team as possible (timezones allowing) Build trust early and play games, ice breakers, whatever.