Virtual Onboarding: A Quick Guide to Planning

Employee onboarding is a significant part of a company’s plans and growth. Studies show that excellent employee onboarding can improve employee retention by eighty-two percent. As companies must create a solid strategy for employee onboarding, the task is an entirely different ball game. Whether your company is working fully remotely or following a hybrid model, you must create a well-designed onboarding program to ease your new hires and communicate a better work culture.

What Is Virtual Onboarding?

As we said at the outset, the present world has become tech-savvy. Businesses have successfully adjusted to the “new normal” workspace, which involves the significant contribution of technology and virtual platforms for conducting day-to-day office tasks and beyond.

Virtual onboarding has been part of the business world for a long time but has taken a different turn after businesses adopted remote and hybrid working standards. The idea of virtual onboarding is similar to what the in-person onboarding process looks like. However, virtual onboarding is far more convenient and impactful than in-person onboarding.

Goals of Virtual Onboarding

The aim of virtual onboarding is similar to in-person onboarding, which is to explain work culture, terms of services, job roles, and more to the new hires. However, there is more to achieve:

• The onboarding process focuses on seamlessly making the new employee part of the organization.
• Virtual onboarding focuses on explaining work culture, terms of service, job roles, and all the essential information about the company needed by new employees.
• Virtual onboarding tools such as video conferencing, online resources, and trusted virtual platforms help conduct the onboarding process.

In the past two years, we have learned that change and adaptation are inevitable. After the pandemic debacle, businesses worldwide have seen massive shifts in their terms, policies, and working style. Virtual onboarding, in this case, helps firms in explaining to new hires what changes have become part of the business module.

With virtual onboarding, new hires can try to understand the terms and policies differences independently. Instead, online resources, interactive sessions, and webinars help the freshers quickly access information from their laptops, which allows them to understand the company culture and their corporate journey.

How to Conduct a Virtual Onboarding Fair

By now, you have an idea of how necessary it is to have a well-planned virtual onboarding fair for your company and new employees. Well, you don’t have to look any further. Here are a few tips for how you can conduct virtual onboarding fairs.

A Warm Welcome Goes a Long Way

Creating a well-structured onboarding strategy is not as easy as you’d think. A Gallup survey found that only twelve percent of employees agree that their organization is doing a great job onboarding new employees. It means an alarming percentage of organizations are lacking in conducting a satisfactory onboarding fair.

As we said, a robust onboarding fair can help with a higher retention rate. Therefore, it is your time to do the needful. So, the first thing you need to do is offer a warm welcome to your new employees.

It is certain that the new hires are nervous and have various thoughts going on in their heads when joining a team. Especially if you are bringing in new employees for your remotely working company, the employees may not know what to expect on day one. This is where a warm welcome comes in handy.

A welcome email should include the following:

•  A warm welcome to the company
•  A quick introduction to their onboarding point of contact
•  An employer branding attachment
•  Links to important documents and sites
•  Check-in arrangements and details
•  A welcome video
•  Check-list of shipped equipment (laptop, headphones, swag)
• An invitation to join the onboarding site

Highlight Company Success

You might wonder why a hired employee needs to hear all the company has achieved or is looking forward to scoring. Well, it is one of the most crucial steps in a virtual onboarding fair which many companies need to pay attention to.

The Digitate report found that one in five new hires is unlikely to recommend their employers after the onboarding experience. It helps to motivate your employees and make them feel part of something from the beginning. You have to focus on employer branding. Highlighting company success can help validate employees’ decision to become part of your organization.

Remember to Focus on Company Culture

Focusing on company work culture is the basis of virtual onboarding fairs. Everything you communicate with your new hires through onboarding should direct them toward your company culture. It is necessary to showcase the values and attitude your company possesses.

Especially for remote workers, it is essential to get connected with the company’s roots from the start of their corporate journey. A well-designed virtual onboarding fair can help create a sense of belonging and responsibility early on. The activities or videos you make as part of the virtual onboarding fair will develop the desired attitude towards the company, colleagues, clients, and their work.

Make Room for Introductions

There’s just so much you can do with virtual onboarding fairs. Unlike a traditionally designed onboarding process, virtual onboarding helps new hires explore the organization’s different employee programs. With a reliable virtual platform like vFairs that offers convenient virtual onboarding fairs, new hires can visit virtual booths or attend webinars to understand the company’s mission, vision, and values. Moreover, a virtual platform helps new hires understand different departments and hierarchies.

With the help of a virtual platform like vFairs, you can develop a virtual onboarding fair that ensures that new hires are well-informed and not overwhelmed with the details.

Start Assigning New Tasks

Once your new hires are familiar with the company mission, vision, values, and overall hierarchy, they eagerly look forward to starting their work. At this stage, you should have an onboarding assignment pack containing all the necessary training your new hires require before jumping on their tasks. You can start assigning the relevant work to your employees and help them use new methods and approaches.

Make Sure to Test the Virtual Onboarding Fair

Once you have scheduled all the activities for your virtual onboarding fair, giving the process a test drive is necessary. A test drive will help you catch any hindrances in onboarding before you forward the fair to the new hire. After all, you want to leave a good impression on the new hires with a non-tested or poorly designed virtual onboarding fair.

You can also read: How to develop a virtual onboarding plan

The Must-Haves: Virtual Onboarding Features

After getting the gist of how a virtual onboarding fair is conducted, you might feel overburdened. Well, the good news is that plenty of virtual platforms offer easy ways to create a virtual onboarding fair. One of the most popular virtual onboarding platforms, vFairs, offers webinar technology, resources, and more to help businesses limit virtual onboarding issues.

Following are the employee onboarding software features by vFairs that help with the fast, accessible, and smooth onboarding of new hires into your organization.

Secure Virtual Venues

Having secure virtual venues is one of the most significant benefits of having a virtual platform to create a virtual onboarding fair for your company. vFairs is well recognized for offering restricted access to virtual venues so that the virtual onboarding fair created for your company remains secure. Moreover, the platform boosts security with two-factor authorization and single sign-on.

When onboarding new hires into your remote company, they might inevitably feel a little hesitant early in the process because of a lack of physical touch. However, with stunning 3D halls, you can bring your corporate building to life for your new hires. You can create a space that is easy to navigate using lobbies, auditoriums, and familiar halls so that the new hires quickly develop a sense of belonging to the workplace. You can customize booths for your departments and training modules while mimicking department reps with diverse avatars.

This secure virtual venue feature kick-starts the virtual onboarding fair in a closed network and keeps the new hires excited about their corporate journey with the life-like virtual building.

Engagement

Unlike in-person onboarding, virtual onboarding fairs need many more elements to keep the new hires engaged and interested. With vFairs engagement features like host training with live, semi-live, and pre-recorded sessions, you ensure your employees do not get bored with the information. Also, you can create customized webinar agendas for employee training and offer prompt help via Q&A sessions and polls.

To keep things exciting, vFairs offers scavenger hunts; leaderboards games for new hires. Also, new hires can remain updated with in-event alerts and notifications. All this and much more helps in creating a virtual onboarding fair that does not lack employee engagement.

Resources

One of the most significant benefits of opting for a virtual onboarding fair instead of in-person onboarding is to have access to resources that are easy to handle. With vFairs virtual onboarding services, you can upload onboarding guides, videos, assessments, and more to your resource vault. Also, you can allow the employee to download the resources into their virtual briefcase while they navigate the fair. You can also share event information and more with a branded landing page of your virtual onboarding fair.

Reporting

It is only fair that you have all the real-time information on how your virtual onboarding fair is sitting with the new hires. To help you with this, vFairs offers real-time metrics for training progress and engagement. Moreover, you can also access reports, including booth visits, resource downloads, and webinar views. Furthermore, you can also grab insights into employee journeys and use feedback surveys to measure the success of your virtual onboarding fair. You can also run post-events reports to analyze the success of the virtual onboarding fair. So many reporting benefits can help you make out of the onboarding process.

Networking

Having the right networking features is essential for a successful virtual onboarding fair. With vFairs, you can connect prospects with reps via chat, audio, and video calls. You can also use themed chat rooms for your organization’s departments. Scheduling onboarding meetings is also convenient with a meeting scheduler within the virtual platform. Lastly, the networking feature offers quick access to reps with interactive exhibit booths.

Customer Support

In a virtual onboarding fair, you can trust a virtual platform like vFairs to complete the job. The bonus point of connecting the onboarding process with vFairs is that the platform offers 24/7 customer support which promptly resolves problems and addresses all queries. The 5-star customer support offers seamless onboarding with in-event troubleshooting and a dedicated project management team.

6 Ideas to Make Virtual Onboarding Fun

Having a set of features for a seamless virtual onboarding fair is fantastic. But, to keep the virtual onboarding fair interesting, you have to think out of the box. Here are a few ideas that will help you in breaking the ice, keep the event highly interactive, and push engagement levels high:

1. Virtual Team Lunches

You have sent a welcome email, assigned tasks, and got your new hires at ease. But what is the next step?

It is the first week of your new hires in the organization, and you must ensure they are still comfortable in their unique journey. For this, you can schedule a team lunch. A virtual team lunch can help team members better understand each other and avoid shop talk. Virtual lunches are an escape from work where team members can discuss non-working topics like popular TV shows, hobbies, and families. It is fun introducing your new hires to the old team members and allowing everyone to connect.

2. Virtual Escape Rooms

Virtual escape rooms are fun. Challenging games in a virtual escape room demand high team collaboration. Your new hires can team up to solve puzzles and decipher clues to win. It is a fantastic way to bring employees closer to the team and give others a chance to show off their creative skills.

3. Virtual Coffee Breaks

Virtual coffee breaks have become a necessary part of remote working. Virtual coffee breaks can be your partner when trying to ease your new hires into the company. These casual small group gatherings allow new hires to feel more comfortable and get along with others.

4. Ice Breakers

Keeping new hires engaged and excited about their corporate journey in a remote setting can take time and effort. Virtual icebreaker activities can help you learn more about the new hires and also help them do the same. Virtual icebreakers are usually questions or quick games that help people get to know each other better. You can come up with questions like “What is your hometown like” or “What Disney character do you like the most.” Whether the questions are basic or bizarre, the new hires will appreciate your effort to know them and allow them to hang out with the team members.

5. Virtual Scavenger Hunts

A virtual scavenger hunt is a perfect way to create a better bond between new hires and old team members. Your new hires will discover the delight of successful team collaboration early in their journey with scavenger hunts. vFairs helps businesses develop relevant resources for virtual onboarding and organize virtual scavenger hunts to keep the new hires excited about the process.

6. Trivia Games

Playing customized trivia games is a great way to gauge how much your new hires have learned in the first week of onboarding. You can come up with questions about the company and information relevant to their job title. Delivering information without putting your new hires on the spot is fun.

Final Thoughts

As an employer, you already have a lot going on. Therefore, having a well-structured virtual onboarding process is essential for higher retention and employee satisfaction. Here is when you should be taking all the help from vFairs, a recognized virtual onboarding platform – click here to connect with the vFairs team now!