Onboarding in the Age of COVID-19
A new employee's experience with virtual onboarding
So you graduated into a pandemic. Or maybe you lost your job and are starting a new one. For the lucky few, you may have found a better opportunity and are simply changing jobs. No matter the circumstances of how you got there, you now find yourself starting a new job remotely, and it’s terrifying.
Remote onboarding completely changes your first month experience. You have no natural way to meet coworkers. There are no first week outings or get-to-know-you coffee chats. Most of your video call interactions are with your direct superior. While all of this makes it particularly nerve-wracking to start a new job virtually, I promise there are also wonderful aspects about your situation. I’m here to share my experience onboarding virtually with Produx Labs and what I learned during my first 30 days, all of which were remote.
The Positive Side
In this day and age, the news is apocalyptic, social media is politically charged, and every conversation seems to start with a discussion of COVID-19. So instead of adding to our negative environments, I’d like to share the positive aspects of onboarding virtually.
You’ve been hired! With the state of the economy, it would be understandable if a company wanted to wait to hire someone for your position, or at least push off your start date until you could return to the office. Instead, your company has declared that your skillset and position are so valuable that they are taking the time and effort to onboard you now, remotely. You are there for a reason. Remember that.
You have more flexibility: A normal first month of work has its own flaws. You might feel pressure to have busy work all the time, wonder when it’s okay to leave, or stress out over being the first one on your team in the office. Instead, working remotely provides you with more flexibility. Staying available and communicating with your team is important, but if you need to change up your hours due to your personal situation, it can be much easier at home.
Your company now has more experience working remotely: While it might be intimidating that most or all of your team members met each other in person first, they are all used to working remotely by now. They have a far better handle on remote work than they did in March. They’ve likely already iterated on their processes, so your virtual workplace has already withstood some testing and optimization.
They’re looking to make the onboarding process easy for you: It costs your company money to onboard you. They want you to have the best experience possible, and your ideas are a key part of that. Instead of relying on their tried and true in-person onboarding practices, your company will be more willing to get creative and treat you as a partner in creating your onboarding experience. Help them come up with ways for you to meet the team like virtual lunches. We even included a virtual game in one of our video lunches to promote team building. Ask to set up weekly virtual coffee breaks or quick guided yoga for less formal video meetings. You are a huge part of your onboarding journey, and you have the ability to influence your experience now more than ever.
Your company culture will shine through: Even in a remote environment, you can feel your company’s culture come to light. I was incredibly grateful for the care and thought that my company put into my virtual onboarding. Produx Labs took steps to ensure that I had the resources, knowledge, and access to team members that I needed to succeed. Culture can be a strong influence in choosing your job, and research shows it’s almost as important to job seekers as salary. In my experience, the culture that drove you to take this job will manage to come through in your onboarding, even virtually.
My Dos and Don’ts
✅ Do: Ask for resources and tasks, particularly in the first week. See if there is company content or asynchronous educational materials that you can work on and browse through in your downtime. For me, this was the Product Institute, our online school for product management. With materials like these, you’ll feel like you’re learning about your job and making progress towards your onboarding while keeping yourself busy in a meaningful way.
❌ Don’t: Forget to take breaks! During my first two weeks, I felt chained to my desk. I wanted to always be online and ready to answer any messages or emails that came my way as quickly as possible. I wanted to demonstrate that I was here and active and ready to contribute to the team. That meant forgetting to stay hydrated or take a lunch break. It meant feeling overwhelmed and like work was my whole world. It sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly easy to forget to take breaks.
✅ Do: Change locations. This could be shifting from your chair to your couch. It could be moving to a different room. It could be using any outdoor area as an additional workspace. Changing locations throughout the day when possible helped give me a sense of creative energy and reminded me to stand up every once in a while.
❌ Don’t: Stay indoors. This is certainly dependent on your environment, but I would highly recommend getting outside during your lunch break. If you can take a walk instead of spending even more time inside staring at a screen, it creates a much needed break. Fresh air can do wonders for your energy and mental well-being.
✅ Do: Share some details about your home situation. Everyone has a different working environment right now. While it can be uncomfortable sharing personal details so early on in your new job, it can be incredibly helpful in laying a groundwork of understanding for you and your team. I was always so cautious to mute myself when I heard the slightest noise from anyone else in my household, but at some point that is unsustainable. Creating an environment where it’s okay if your dog starts barking in the background or your child shouts out from the other room will make you more comfortable communicating with your team and working in your household.
❌ Don’t: Forget your list of questions. It is most helpful to hear the answers to your questions on video calls instead of Slack messages. This way, you can get a deeper understanding of the answer, ask follow up questions, and build more of a connection with your coworkers. Try using post-its or keeping a notepad to jot down questions as they come up and save them for your virtual check-ins when you can.
✅ Do: Change after work. Even from comfy clothes to other comfy clothes. Having something that physically changes in your environment to shift your mindset from work to personal time can have significant mental health benefits. This is particularly helpful if you don’t have an office at home and work in the same room that you spend a lot of personal time in.
Filling Awkward Pauses
Yes, awkward pauses will happen. This is a great time to pull out that list of questions you’ve been saving. Or ask about any changes since you’ve been hired. What work is coming down the pipeline? What initiatives have shifted since COVID-19? Most importantly, what kind of work can you help with, complete, or learn about to provide value at this time?
All out of questions? If awkward pauses happen in a one on one, this is also a great time to get to know someone. Letting other people share a piece of themselves with you might be a breath of fresh air for them in their day full of client-facing and stakeholder calls. It will also help you get to know your team members better.
Proving Yourself
I was eager to show off my skills and get started on real, meaningful work. This heightened my fears of being virtual. I was convinced that if my team couldn’t physically see me working hard all the time, they wouldn’t know how much work I was doing.
In just 30 days, I learned how wrong I had been. Meaningful work will always be visible. Much like product management, your goals should focus on outcomes over outputs. In a lean startup like my company, this may be possible in your first 30 days. In a larger organization, you may not get to meaningful projects as quickly. Be patient and know that your work will stand on its own. You don’t need to produce a daily or weekly document telling your team how you spent your time and what you worked on in order to show what you’ve accomplished. If you instead focus on how your work can impact the team and how you can develop yourself into a better teammate, you will prove yourself time and time again.
Jamie Zack is the Senior Data Analyst at Produx Labs. She earned her MBA at Johnson Cornell Tech with a focus on product management and business strategy.
