It all happened so fast.
In a matter of weeks, companies everywhere shut down offices and went fully remote — with employees working from home and connecting over video and email instead of in-person. And those are just the people lucky enough to still have jobs.
To say this has made work more difficult is an understatement. But what about people who are just starting new jobs and those who are responsible for onboarding them? How do you get someone up to speed when you’ve never actually met them? How do you make them feel like part of the team when the team itself is scattered across the country and around the world?
How do you foster and maintain the culture when so many people are never in the same place?
This post aims to share lessons from leaders who run distributed companies — including GitLab, Elastic and others — about how to onboard employees and maintain culture in a remote work environment. Done right, these steps won’t just make things easier during this tough time; they will also help over the long-term as some teams move to more distributed, remote environments.
The lessons themselves fall into three main buckets:
Write it down
Writing things down may sound like more work, but having a record also forces people to think through processes and make sure they are consistent. Winging it isn’t good enough anymore. Neither is accepting different levels of training depending on who your manager is. It’s time to make what was somewhat informal and ad hoc more formal and concrete.
When it comes to onboarding, every company should ask themselves:
- What is the process for onboarding?
- Who does the person meet with (virtual or in person)?
- What does the person have access to (channels, apps, materials)?
- What is the new hire responsible for?
- What is the expected cadence for communications?
GitLab has the distinction of being a $2.7 billion company that has been entirely remote from day one. As a result, according to CEO Sid Sijbrandij, onboarding at GitLab is very much written down. For example, at GitLab a new hire and their manager are given more than 200 checkboxes that allow the new employee to 1) know what they’re responsible for and 2) hold others accountable so they can get the information they need. This may seem like a lot, but it delivers a level of clarity and consistency that justifies the extra effort.
Leah Sutton, who runs global human resources at Elastic, also recommends taking the time to write things down. Elastic was born a distributed company, with founders in Israel, Germany and the Netherlands. Today, it’s hard for people who join the company to know what happened there a week or a month ago. That’s why Leah and her team think about what’s worth sharing, put it in writing and share it consistently. It’s the best way to be intentional about what stays and what gets swept away.
Creating a written record isn’t just important for onboarding steps, or other basic information that might get lost in an avalanche of email. It’s also important for things like values. According to Sid Sijbrandij, GitLab tripled their headcount across 65+ countries and regions last year, but the company’s values only got stronger. “You can’t count on geography to reinforce your values if you’re building for scale,” he says.
That’s not just true for new hires. Leaders should also ask themselves how many current employees know what the company’s values are. If the answer is not “everyone,” there’s work to do. Values need to be lived every day and communicated often through how leaders act, what they do and what gets celebrated and rewarded — on day one, and every day after that.
Archive it
Today, everyone is in different time zones, focusing on different things. That requires flexibility, as well as pragmatism.
With a distributed team, it’s almost impossible to find a time zone that works for everyone. That’s why Elastic tries to focus on the core teams’ time zones and record meetings for the rest of the teams to watch on their own time. Then they make sure to have the right channels for communication and Q&A.
The idea of archiving content is becoming increasingly popular, with many distributed companies recording, documenting and distributing everything from team meetings to presentations. Sid Sijbrandij at GitLab recommends recording meetings and video calls; that way anyone in any time zone can see it. He also suggests recording video calls for historical accessibility and sharing them with other teams and stakeholders. And while GitLab makes information widely available, it intentionally targets information at the employees who actually need it to help avoid information overload.
Of course it doesn’t matter how many meetings are available online if no one watches them. Employees also need to spend time actually consuming the content on their own time. To make this easier, companies should think about whether a meeting is really needed. Maybe there is a better way of getting the work done or sharing information.
Communicate it through the right channels
In the early days of TV, radio producers thought they could take radio programs, broadcast them on TV and get the same reaction. It didn’t work. TV was a completely new medium, requiring a completely new approach.
The same is true for the different channels and modes of communication. There is a big difference between synchronous and asynchronous ways of sharing information.
When deciding to do something live, don’t lecture at people. Lectures can be recorded and watched anytime. Make live content interactive. If a meeting includes a presentation, ask yourself if the presentation can be recorded and watched ahead of time. At GitLab, leaders will often send a recording or documentation in advance and use the live meeting time for discussion and questions.
Live events can also be used to make social connections. At Elastic, Leah Sutton recommends scheduling a casual virtual meet-and-greet for new employees, and leaving plenty of time for questions and conversations. She also recommends creating feedback loops to better understand what’s working and what’s not.
Leah also points out that, while Elastic has always been distributed, things are different now. People aren’t just working remotely — parents are also being asked to be full-time caregivers and homeschool teachers, and everyone is dealing with the stress that comes from worrying about a loved one or being stuck inside. She recommends asking how people are doing before diving into work, and acknowledging how much pressure everyone is under. A little compassion can go a long way.
That certainly resonates with me! As I write this, my 11-year-old son is supposed to be doing math in the other room. He’s not. It’s a little thing, but everyone has some version of this going on in their lives every day. It’s important to make the work side of life a little bit easier.