The ability to work from home — often exclusively — has been a game changer for employers as well as their employees. By offering extraordinary flexibility to the professionals who don’t have to physically be in the office and vastly expanding employers’ pool of potential hires, the technologies that make telecommuting possible have helped organizations and their staff increase productivity, improve engagement and save on costs (e.g. overhead, gasoline, car maintenance, child care, etc.). It’s little wonder why the number of Americans who primarily work from home has tripled in recent years, jumping from roughly nine million in 2019 to more than 27 million people in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For example, close to half of area residents (48.3%) in the nation’s capital alone work from the comfort of home.
But, when newly hired remote employees need to learn the ropes about company policies, sign documents and receive the formal training on how to do their job effectively and to the best of their ability, a seamless remote onboarding experience is key.
However, such seamlessness doesn’t come easily. In fact, as the Society for Human Resources Management reported from polling data, many organizations say their processes would likely be smoother if they had better digital onboarding technology.
If you’re an IT administrator or are in charge of the digital onboarding process for your remote workforce, this article will offer some high level guidance and tips regarding existing solutions that help your WFH staff receive the training they need to succeed.
Become familiar with available remote onboarding tools
Knowing what solutions exist is central to any process designed to facilitate the onboarding of a remote workforce. As you might imagine in a digital age, there are a wide variety of them, including:
- Video conferencing
- Onboarding platforms
- Learning management systems (LMS)
- Electronic signatures
- Virtual collaboration
- Employee engagement platforms
The automated tools, software and capabilities such as these can be used to collect feedback from new hires (employee engagement platforms), facilitate communication and engagement (virtual collaboration), deliver online training (LMS) and much more. Depending on your needs and how much of your staff is primarily remote will influence whether investing in one, two or a combination of these tools is worthwhile.
Know the basics of user provisioning
You know that user provisioning refers to the processes of creating and managing user accounts for applications and systems within your organization, such as onboarding platforms, employee engagement platforms or LMS. But, you may not be familiar with what that process entails. Naturally, it largely depends on the systems that are in place, but in general, it includes:
Create a user account or user accounts: Appropriately enough, the first phase of user provisioning is setting up a new user account for the application, system or platform. This includes the person’s user name(s) and password(s).
Assigning access rights: To ensure only authorized users can access the system you’re using, you need to allocate access rights, which involves defining the data or functionality that the user(s) can utilize.
Granting permission: While assigning access rights is more about defining what actions users can perform, granting permission defines the user’s authority within the application. Their status (i.e. associate, manager, director, etc.) also determines what capabilities they have within the system, application or platform.
Removing access: Where appropriate (such as when an employee leaves the organization or moves on to a different role within the company), removing access revokes a user’s privileges within the system.
Opting for a single platform application deployment
Many variables will determine how long your remote employees — or any other employee, for that matter — will be with the company; you really never know for sure. But, what you do know is that there will be new users of the system(s) that you have in place. To avoid the hassles associated with helping new users familiarize themselves with the onboarding solution itself, seek a solution with a single-platform application deployment. They’re more user-friendly, have an intuitive interface and provide real-time, intelligent insights that help streamline onboarding.
Similarly, you should also look for a solution with single sign-on procedures. Just as there will be new users, they’ll need to sign in now and again to complete their training or for other work processes. As its name suggests, single sign-on enables users to sign in just once, making log in quick and convenient without compromising users’ security or your business’ sensitive data.
In an industry as fast paced and competitive as yours, the last thing you want from onboarding software is one that requires onboarding just to use it, which is often the case when solutions are a conglomeration of tools. That’s why more businesses choose Faronics Deploy. With Faronics Deploy, administrators can view every device on their network from one place with the ability to find, fix and automate updates through a cloud-based next-generation deployment architecture. Our intuitive device management tools provide maximum control over all of your enterprise systems, enabling you to manage everything from one smart console. Learn more about Faronics Deploy by getting in touch with us today.