Posted: 28 Apr. 2020 5 min. read

Virtual onboarding

Considerations to support delivering an exceptional onboarding experience during business disruption

Posted by Kevin Moss and Sona Manzo on April 29, 2020.

A significant focus for many organizations right now is managing through unprecedented workforce conditions resulting from the response to COVID-19.

Many companies continue to hire but are faced with disruptions to their traditional onboarding processes.  Stay-at-home orders and social distancing have accelerated the need to establish or implement fully virtual onboarding programs.  Given that effective onboarding is key to both enablement and retention of new talent, it is imperative that companies develop simplified, personalized and engaging virtual onboarding experiences that help ensure critical tasks are completed and that your new hire feels welcomed and connected to your company and culture and has the tools and team support to quickly contribute in their new role. 

Below are a few key moments that matter in delivering a positive virtual onboarding experience:

  • Completing the requirements: These activities are centered around required tasks that can help ensure that a new hire has the required equipment and access and that they can be paid.  Compliance with regulations is a key consideration during this stage of onboarding.
  • Connecting to the company: At this moment, new hires should feel welcomed, energized, and connected to the company, the culture, and to resources and networks that can help them be successful. In addition, they should clearly understand the company policies company.
  • Connecting to the role:  New hire success and retention are often directly related to their ability to quickly understand expectations and to have access to the training, resources, and leadership that will help them get up to speed and contribute quickly in the new role. In this stage of onboarding, the focus is on virtual learning, planned activities, and accomplishments and frequent check-in are in a virtual environment.

How we can help: Deloitte Consulting LLP can help you rapidly assess, strategize, develop, and deploy a virtual onboarding experience that responds to current market conditions.  Our focus is on elevating the human experience while meeting the immediate objectives of documentation, enablement, and connecting with the new employee through the onboarding process.
 

Authors

Kevin Moss is a managing director in Deloitte’s Workforce Transformation practice and co-leads our Talent Access/Talent Acquisition offering. Kevin works with complex, global, and US clients to help them move beyond the traditional model of Attract-Develop-Retain to a new, transformational workforce model to access the right people and capabilities across the workforce spectrum, curate consumer-grade development experience and services, and redesign and create workforce programs and services.

Sona Manzo is a managing director in Deloitte’s Workforce Transformation practice and co-leads our Talent Access/Talent Acquisition offering. She brings a focus on stakeholder experience, human-centered design, development of innovative programs, and leverage of leading and emerging technology to deliver on the talent access and talent management needs of our US and global clients. 

Writers:

Mike Grennier, Deloitte Consulting LLP, specialist master
Carol Repeta, Deloitte Consulting LLP, manager
Brian Bangs, Deloitte Consulting LLP, consultant

Contributors:

Bhawna Bist, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior manager
Cathy Gutierrez, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior manager
Stefan Lint, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior manager
Edgar Palacios, Deloitte Consulting LLP, manager
Derrick Friend, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior consultant
Brandon Kennedy, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior consultant
Monte Watson, Deloitte Consulting LLP, senior consultant
Peter Rumsey, Deloitte Consulting LLP, consultant

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