[Real Beat] Adapting to a New Job Without Seeing Faces? Essential Remote Work Course 'Onboarding' [Office Shift] (27)

'Onboarding' to Help New Members Adapt... Frequent Resignations if Done Wrong
Many Apply 'One-on-One Secretary' Programs in Remote Environments

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is short for 'Jung Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend,' a segment that showcases trends in changes in work. The segment within Jjinbit called 'Office Shift' carefully examines the changes in offices triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and will serve as a foundation to explore answers to new work styles through experiments we have conducted together. It will be delivered to you every Saturday and Sunday morning. After 40 installments, it will also be available as a book.

Microsoft (MS) hired over 50,000 people during the pandemic. Although it carried out layoffs of more than 10,000 employees earlier this year due to the wave of cutbacks in big tech, MS steadily accumulated experience in onboarding new members in a remote work environment during the height of COVID-19. Not only new hires but also experienced employees joined the organization called MS one after another.

"In a hybrid work environment that combines remote work and office attendance, your manager is now a 'full-service concierge.'"

Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft (MS)
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Satya Nadella, CEO of MS, said this last year on a podcast by Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, regarding considerations when onboarding new members in a hybrid work environment. A concierge refers to an employee in a hotel lobby who acts as a kind of butler catering to guests' needs, meaning that the manager directly above the new hire should play this role. They must become a 'personalized assistant' who informs everything about meetings from A to Z and shares organizational culture and communication styles.

CEO Nadella said, "It is different from the time when we relied on a full onboarding system with many employees participating (in person)." He also introduced a case where a manager opened a Microsoft Teams window, a video conferencing system connecting two people, so that a newly hired employee could build relationships with other employees, then just made introductions and left. Although this might be cumbersome for some managers, he emphasized that it can create bonds among people even in a remote work environment.

◆ If onboarding fails, 'mass resignations' may occur... A new form is needed

For companies implementing remote work, one of the biggest concerns, as much as training new hires, is the onboarding of experienced employees. Onboarding, meaning 'to get on board' in English, is used to describe helping employees who are boarding the organization’s ship for the first time to become skilled sailors. New members must adapt smoothly to the existing organization to handle work efficiently and increase productivity, so organizations inevitably pay close attention to onboarding.

Reference article: May 20, 2023 '[Jjinbit] "Junior employees should come to the office"... Remote work 'new hire training' [Office Shift] (26)'

Before the pandemic, the entire process of adapting to the organization?from learning how to use messengers, building relationships, coordinating work areas, to understanding organizational culture and communication methods?was conducted offline. However, companies implementing remote work must adopt a different approach to perform these tasks remotely. When going to the office, employees can meet people directly in a new space, communicate through tangible and intangible language, and absorb the atmosphere with their whole body. But in a remote work environment, everything must be experienced by meeting and talking through a laptop screen.

If new employees fail to onboard properly, the pain the organization must endure is bitter. Poor onboarding causes new employees to resign. It can lead to a situation where the organization spends a lot of money on recruitment procedures and then drives away talented people who were hard to attract.

According to Forbes, a Nasdaq-listed HR solution service provider Paychex surveyed about 1,000 workers last year and found that 80% of respondents who felt they did not receive proper onboarding said they would 'quit the company soon.'

Imagine being in a new company after leaving your previous job but not feeling welcomed. You might not know how the organization operates or whom to ask when you have questions. This leads to a long adaptation period and difficulty understanding what work to do, making it hard for the individual, the company, and colleagues. They would want to run away from the company.

This phenomenon is more severe in remote work situations. One in three respondents in the Paychex survey said they felt confused because they did not receive proper training during onboarding. Especially for those onboarded remotely, this rate was 36%, relatively higher than those working face-to-face or in hybrid settings. Paychex analyzed that remote workers expressed their intention to quit 117% more than office workers for these reasons.

In a remote work environment, employees tend to strengthen existing relationships rather than build new ones. It is not easy to send messages and chat with employees you have never met. Prioritizing strengthening relationships with people you already know is the norm.

A global consulting firm McKinsey surveyed about 5,500 male and female workers in the U.S. last year and found that only 14% of respondents said their so-called 'network,' the social connections inside and outside the workplace, expanded after COVID-19. Among respondents, 28% said they tried to build new relationships, while 31% focused on strengthening existing ones, showing a tendency to concentrate more on reinforcing existing relationships in an environment where building new ones is difficult.

In this atmosphere, an appropriate onboarding process for new members joining a company working remotely is truly an 'essential course' for safely settling into the organization.

◆ How companies adopting remote work conduct 'onboarding'

As mentioned by Nadella, the so-called concierge strategy is included in most onboarding programs of companies operating remote work systems. Although called mentors, buddies, and other names, the core is to assign dedicated personnel who provide personalized help by matching new employees one-on-one with team members.

Naver uses a face-to-face onboarding strategy even during remote work. Naver, which operates a 'Connected Work' system allowing employees to freely choose their work location, requires new hires to come to the office at least once a week for the first three months after joining. Employees can choose between 'Type R,' which allows remote work five days a week, and 'Type O,' which requires coming to the office at least three days a week, but for the first three months, they must comply with the office attendance rule. This is to help them adapt well to the company.

Just coming to the office alone does not mean new hires will automatically understand the company’s work. Naver also recommends that the 'buddy,' a mentor within the new hire’s team, come to the office at least once a week for three months. The company supports having meals or going to cafes together, and fixed seats, which are not assigned to employees choosing Type R, are provided to both new hires and buddies during this period. A Naver representative explained, "This system is to help new hires adapt by spending time together in the office for three months."

Woowa Brothers, the operator of a delivery application, which has implemented a 'workplace autonomy system' since early this year, uses various technological tools like Slack to communicate online. A team member becomes a 'caretaker' for a month to help new hires adapt to the team and work, but there is no obligation to come to the office. When asked if remote work makes learning tasks difficult, a Woowa Brothers representative said, "There are various work-sharing tools and communication tools, so it is not necessary to meet offline."

However, to help new hires absorb organizational culture and adapt quickly, Woowa Brothers holds an offline 'Baemin Culture Camp' twice a month at the time of joining to build bonds among peers and understand the organizational culture and services.

Some companies are serious about preparing detailed onboarding materials. GitLab, a Nasdaq-listed U.S. software company that has adopted a fully remote work model since its founding in 2011, is one such example. Darren Murph, who was in charge of remote work at GitLab (currently Vice President at global employment agency Andela), said in an interview with the U.S. economic media Business Insider in April 2020, right after COVID-19, that they put great effort into documenting every step of the onboarding process. They realized the importance of documentation early when they had only 10 employees and created an extremely detailed guide like an encyclopedia.