Great Onboarding: Global Reach. Local Feel.
Organizations with large, distributed footprints need local solutions – especially for onboarding, the bedrock that marks the transition from candidate to employee, a critical time of employee engagement. Onboarding done well strengthens an employee’s confidence in their decision to join the company. Onboarding done poorly often leads to employees looking elsewhere. Onboarding done generically can lead to compliance problems and headaches for employees and HR alike.
This is especially true for employees in remote offices or international locations. Many global organizations struggle with local tax regulations, creating a scalable process, and making new employees feel like they belong.
Overcome these global challenges with four easy steps:
1. Be Mindful
Take a moment and reflect on the different cultures embodied in your company. Understand how gestures, words, and actions can be perceived through the lens of the local culture.
Create an onboarding process that’s culturally appropriate and resonates with your new employees, wherever in the world they happen to be.
2. Tailor the Experience
Modern employees expect a custom experience that reflects their role and location. They’re used to Amazon and Pandora ‘knowing’ them and recommending things based on their taste. Welcome them to your company with an experience that precisely speaks to them.
3. Systematize the Process
One of the challenges facing global organizations is the manifestation of work processes and SOP’s that vary widely. We’ve seen one large company with a division using pdf onboarding paperwork from 2004 and another that had misplaced entire employee files. Basically the stuff of HR compliance nightmares!
Create a single global onboarding process with guided, intuitive flow for both HR and employees, that has all the necessary compliance documentation, no matter where in the world the employee is. Include a spot for local flair, such as welcome videos, to imbue the onboarding process with life and the company brand.
4. Automate Everything
Dated spreadsheets, PDF’s, and manual intervention often lead to errors, and definitely don’t impress digital natives. Replace all of that with an automated system.
Establish a rule-based system that automatically curates the experience to the employee’s unique situation. This system eliminates errors by removing manual intervention and makes the onboarding process effortlessly repeatable and scalable.
