Did you know that 33% of remote developers quit within six months of their start date?
According to a Bamboo survey, one-third of developers quit their jobs because of the lack of an effective onboarding process. This outcome can be significantly influenced by virtual onboarding and the new hire experience.
The onboarding process is their first official interaction with you as an employer, so it’s critical to set expectations, make your new hire feel at ease, and assist them in succeeding.
A bad onboarding experience can be costly. The cost is not only financial. Employees who have a negative onboarding experience are more stressed and less productive. It may even harm their perception of your company. So, we can say that onboarding a remote developer is just as important as hiring the right candidate.
If you do it right, your remote onboarding process can:
- reduce employee turnover
- improve engagement and work performance
- reduce stress and anxiety
- build long-term loyalty and commitment
- keep new hires longer – create a better culture
Here are some tips for you to do onboarding right!
1. Pre-onboarding process
You should create a to-do list for onboarding a remote developer; we all do. It’s time to start so that you don’t miss any important steps in the onboarding process. Before starting the onboarding process, make sure that you share the work agreement and a guide with your new developers. In this way, they can understand your company’s remote working policies and the employer-employee relationship.
2. Provide a guide
Send the developer a remote work guide as well as your company’s remote working policies. This will help them better comprehend remote work and lifestyle.
A one- or two-page document or email will probably be sufficient, but your employee should not have to ask around about the tools you use and how you use them. So, be sure that you add everything that the new developer might need!
3. Set expectations
Nothing is more frustrating than starting a new job and not knowing what to do. Plan your new employee’s first few days by assigning them tasks that will help them become acquainted with your tools, processes, and team members.
One of the most important parts of the onboarding process is defining an individual’s Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measurements (V2MOM) document as a method to orient and align all employees as early as possible. The V2MOM’s five parts provide us with a detailed map of where we’re going as well as an understanding of how to get there. So, it is a great beginning to set expectations!
4. Introduce the team
Getting familiar with the team is essential, especially if your new developer comes from a different cultural background. Because, as aware as we all like to think we are, we have an innate tendency to be less comfortable with people we perceive to be different than us- have you ever heard of unconscious bias?
It is your responsibility to ensure that your developers are familiar with the team dynamics. Working remotely can be isolating, and programmers typically work alone. Introduce your new developer to team members, strike up a friendly conversation, and appoint a buddy.
5. Appoint a buddy
Knowing that someone has your back when you’re the new relieves a lot of stress, and the buddy will not only guide the new employee smoothly through your team’s workflow, but they will also begin their integration into the team’s culture. Due to their numerous responsibilities, senior developers may have little time for newcomers. A buddy should ideally be a senior colleague or supervisor with development team experience.
6. Direct to the appropriate tools
When your developer is based in another country, it’s easy to assume they’re using their own tools. And to be fair, most people have their own procedures. However, your team is working on specific tools, and your new developer should be familiar with them.
Ensure that you inform developers about all of the necessary tools and software in order to shorten the training process and make the first few days of new hires more productive. So that everyone will be on the same page, or in this case, on the same app!
7. Get them started on an onboarding project
In general, new remote workers on the engineering team should not be given access to production code right away. Instead, keep in mind that this is a trial period: you want to see how they perform without risking your project!
You can give them a small project that is relevant to your actual project to test their developer skills. You can either give them a small project that someone else has completed to see how they do things differently. From start to finish, this mini-project should take about two to three weeks.
8. Follow up
Our experience shows us that it takes an employee seven days to begin integrating into the company culture and workflow. During this time, the employee is more likely to give up old work habits that don’t work for your company and to pick up your strategies and ways of doing things.
The daily check-in meeting should be another item on the developer’s onboarding checklist during the first week. You can sync the status of an ongoing project or what’s going on that day. As a result, new developers will remain up-to-date and feel connected to the rest of the team.
Get Experts for Hiring a Remote Developer
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