How Perk Canada Successfully Onboards New Staff During Remote Work

Remote Onboarding New Employees During the Pandemic

The past two years have brought a lot of obvious change to the workforce: remote work, limited staff events, and going through screening protocols to be physically in-office when local bylaws allow for it. Looking back, we all thought working from home would be a quick 14-day window, but here we are, going into year three.

While Perk Canada is currently working with a hybrid model—most of our staff continue to work from home, but the office is open for those who choose to come in—all the hiring we’ve done recently occurred while stay at home orders were in place.

How did we remotely onboard new staff, while still maintaining our “office atmosphere”? Luckily, it was easier than we initially thought it would be.

Going Digital

Typically, new hires would be greeted by their manager, meet their immediate team, go out for lunch, tour the office, raid the snack table, and begin training. But how were we supposed to carry out the same activities and foster the same sentiment with remote staff?

Through the power of Zoom!

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as many tech companies are quick to adapt, and by now, used to using Zoom to connect with colleagues. All meet-and-greets and training sessions were done virtually, and despite a few connection issues—which were quickly sorted—everyone was able to hit the ground running.

But what else did we incorporate?

Swag bags! Virtual cards! And even more slack channels for non-work discussions so staff could connect and get to know each other a little bit better. And thankfully, our new hires loved it all.

The Testimonials Speak for Themselves

“I loved the onboarding greeting card signed by the Perk team that was sent to me virtually. Shadowing my peers for the first 2 weeks and picking their brains was a great learning experience. Louis and the team were very helpful with any questions I had. I liked how Perk set up my onboarding meetings with the higher ups of all the departments. I was able to introduce myself to all the employees.” – Mrinal

“The remote onboarding process was relatively seamless. A member of the IT team dropped by my house to drop off equipment and was in constant contact virtually on setup.” – Mohammad

“Meeting with other team members was so exciting. There are also multiple channels on Slack like #listening-to, #gaming, and #anime which allowed me to know more about teams and their interest outside work. And every other Friday, they have a virtual Show and Tell session where team members share something they are working on. It’s helpful for others and is really good for interaction with other teammates.” – Gurvinder

Moving Forward

It’d be easy to say that virtual onboarding isn’t ideal, but honestly, it has worked well in our favour. We’re able to seamlessly set up new employees, have them meet their teams and others in the company, get involved in social aspects of the office, and complete all the necessary training for their role.

As things begin to open back up and people are comfortable meeting in person, we’ll be able to do in-person events again. For now, our hybrid model is working, and we’ll continue to adapt and change along with everything else.