Remote Employee - Onboarding Checklist

How to onboard remote employees

Ship/hand out  IT hardware, computers, phones, and manuals. Confirm they have received all the necessary equipment for their work and ask your IT department to assist them with setup. Some essentials may include:

• Laptop
• Mouse
• Keyboard
• Phone
• External hard drive 

Gift new hires company swag. You can include:

• Branded merchandise, like a coffee mug or T-shirt
• A welcome letter or note from their team or your CEO 
• Personalized gifts a book or gift cards to local cafes

Help new remote employees complete HR paperwork. Use an e-signature tool, like HelloSign or DocuSign, when possible.  

Get them up to speed on your company culture, including:

• Employee handbook
• Any presentations or literature on your company values
• Pictures and videos from training, meetings, or company events

Run through communication tools. Also,  help them set up:

• Company email
• Group messaging tool
• Video conference software

Have hiring managers go over specific goals and expectations. They should also:

• Develop and share a task calendar to get started after onboarding
• Define short-term and long-term goals
• Schedule weekly one-on-one meetings to discuss upcoming projects, progress and resolve potential issues

Set up meetings with their team members and other key employees, so remote employees meet: 

• Coworkers
• Manager and direct reports
• Employees from other departments they’ll work closely with

Arrange role-specific training: 

• Use interactive training courses that are user-friendly 
• Record product demos to better explain features through video
• Follow up after each training session to answer questions

Have your IT department set up training. Remote workers should get familiar with:

• File-sharing applications and cloud backup software (like Google Drive, Dropbox)
• Computer security (anti-virus software, intranet)
• Password management and data encryption tools 

Schedule calls after their first week, month and quarter to review goals and performance.

Invite new hires to the office the first week if they are nearby. If you have distributed teams and all employees work from home, try to schedule quarterly or annual events or retreats.