Now that you’ve hired your offshore staff, how do you help them quickly adapt to their new work environment? A well-planned onboarding process eases the transition and makes them feel connected to your in-house team. These 3 tips aim to make your offshore staff productive and engaged from the get go.
Prepare a good orientation
As the virtual onboarding process can be confusing to your new hire, a well-prepared orientation helps you both get off to a good start. The precise makeup of your orientation is completely up to you. Along with your warm welcome, make sure to provide enough, detailed information on company policies, paperwork, workflow, processes, systems, and/or tools they’re going to use.
To save time, it’s also a good idea to prepare in advance credentials they need to access the company’s internal platforms. This way they can quickly familiarize themselves with the setup you’re using. Schedule calls or face-to-face meetings so you can walk them through key points and address any questions they might have.
From the outset, set clear expectations with regards to their tasks, deadlines, and progress tracking. A good orientation helps greatly reduce anxiety and enable your offshore staff to confidently get up to speed with the rest of the team.
Keep constant communication
As with any teamwork, constant communication is crucial, especially in the first two to three weeks. Your offshore staff needs to be able to ask questions, get feedback, and report problems in a quick way.
Make communication seamless by investing in the right tools and connecting them to the right in-house team members from whom they can get the best response. Set up a consistent schedule for meetings and updates to keep both of you in the loop. There is nothing like constant and clear communication to build a solid rapport with your new hire.
Cultivate a supportive and inclusive culture
Make your remote workers feel they’re part of the team. Consider using a buddy system: pair up your offshore teammate with an in-house staff who will act as a guide for the first few weeks. Set-up a social media group or online space where they can access resources, do collaborative chats with teammates and initiate meetings with their team leads. Productivity tools such as Slack or Skype can help.
Successfully onboarding your offshore staff can be a challenge. But with the right orientation, constant communication, and supportive culture, you can make the process relatively painless. It's also a great help if your outsourcing partner has a dedicated team that can help you with the process of onboarding as Cloud Employee does with its After Care team.
Follow these tips, refine or change them as you need, and you’re on your way to making a great work environment for your offshore staff.
Looking for an IT outsourcing partner who’ll be there for you throughout the process? Talk to us, learn how Cloud Employee works, or check out our Developer Pricing Guide. You can hire offshore developers with us across these technologies.
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