How have you approached onboarding in a remote working environment?

I brought 2 managers into my organization during the pandemic so I didn't get to meet them face-to-face. There was no onsite interview. We shipped the laptop to their home and away they went. My only solution was to have twice-daily calls with them, once at the beginning of the day and once at the end to say, "Here are your tasks for the day,” and, “How did it go today?" That really helped a lot.

We had some interns a couple months back on certain projects. In order to make them feel more welcome, we actually shipped them pizzas with cozies and all these other things as a care package. That way they really felt like interns—they're not missing the office pizzas or the break group burgers, etc. We tried to recreate those moments. Those are experiences that we all might've gone through, but this current generation is suffering from a lack of them. They may not experience these things for a while, at least.

I think we should think about the things that made us happy and want to go back to the office day in and day out, and recreate them in some way for the new graduates. It will help with retention and it will definitely improve our brand reputation because all these kids are on social media all the time, and they're definitely going to post about it.

I would say onboarding new employees does not work well in our remote environment at all. As somebody who has been onboarded in a remote environment and who's tried to onboard other people in a remote environment, it does not work. It's not the same.

I’d wondered at first if this is a generational issue, whereby the younger generation coming into the workforce were always digital natives and used to developing relationships with people digitally. But I read recently that this same group entering the workforce in their early 20s does want to go to the office because they're losing so much opportunity to connect with people, develop relationships and get that intrinsic learning by observing.