No doubt you are planning for 2021 and with that planning (either in your business, the corporate world, or both), you are going to hire new talent. The challenge you now face is creating a successful onboarding process in a remote environment.
First, I know this idea can lead to a bit of frustration. You are doing your day job, working from home, maybe caring for kids, trying to run your business in the off-hours, and now you have to create an onboarding strategy to help move the corporate business forward. So here’s the deal, think about it this way, if you are doing it for your day job, learn how to do it well so you can hire a virtual assistant for your own business and already know how to onboard him or her correctly. There is always a silver lining!
That said, let’s dive in.
Here are 5 basic mindsets, processes, or routines you need to establish so you can help the new hire be successful:
- Clearly define their role. What are they responsible for? What metrics do they deliver to? What parts of the business do they own, what do they need to do each day? What is their routine? Define it end to end. Success should be an open book test. Your job is not to administer the test, your job is to teach them the material. Know your role.
- What does good look like? Now that they know their roles, how do they exceed expectations? Define success. They already know what to do if you executed #1 above. Now tell them HOW they do the work in a way that is deemed successful.
- Schedule touchbases. You have to talk to your direct report weekly to start. For the next few months you have to check in, ask questions, get updates, and have the routine around reporting and connecting, sharing, and validating what they are working on, building their confidence, and keeping them focused on growing and learning. (Go back and listen to my other episodes to learn more about touchbases.)
- Have viewership of their calendar. You need to ensure they are being productive and executing. They have to have these pillars in their routine or the business won’t have the pillars. Make sure they are scheduling and using their calendar effectively.
- Set deliverables and emails. Define exactly what they need to share with you, when they should share it, and what you want to know. Many times I hear leaders say, “Just give me an update on your business.” The problem with that is that they don’t know the business. You do. So they aren’t going to deliver what you want, because they don’t yet know what that is. Be clear. Be direct. Know your role.
If you can work through these 5 things, your new hire will be successful, and you will have created a successful onboarding process in a remote environment.
Be Legendary!