Why Virtual Onboarding is difficult?

Pandemic has made a lot of things and processes virtual, including the onboardings as well. Virtual Onboarding is when you join an organization virtually through audio or video conferencing, webinars, and other online events that you attend through your computer sitting at your home. So, in short, all of the first-day activities that normally would have been done by being physically present in the office premises are now performed online sitting at home. But there are definitely struggles with that, communication, connection, accessibility are the few ones to be named.  Here are some of the reasons that make Virtual Onboarding and the joining afterward difficult than usual.

Missing the Human connection 

Normally, when you get a new employee on board or you onboard a new organization, you meet real actual people and not just names on communicator or zoom.  The introduction to the new space, new people, new work, and a new culture has its own thrill. It makes you feel good, makes you feel the change from your previous organization and that’s not only refreshing but it's like a new beginning.

With ‘Virtual Onboardings”, you get onboarded with a new Title that you already know of as you have signed up for that, an updated salary may be new assets, a brief introduction about yourself and from your team members so that you are not talking to complete strangers next time when you are getting an assignment. 

In short, you get everything that is on paper but completely miss the things that were never get mentioned while you are signing up and that is human connection, the feeling of achieving something, the baseless conversations that actually becomes the foundation of a friendship, the discussions on previous day’s match or the latest drop on Netflix and many more that is just not related to work and for which you definitely wouldn’t schedule a meeting for.

Difficult to show your potential

I remember one of the joinee in our orientation asks a question “So, how are you going to judge my performance now, since I will be working from home?” though the presenter gave a very diplomatic answer and we had no option but to accept otherwise the orientation would have had eaten our lunch hour as well, but that was a very valid question that definitely needed some discussion and time upon.

I know from my experience (definitely pre covid) that it's just not the work that gets you opportunities but it’s the sincerity, your work ethics, and your temperament as well. My manager use to say, “Don’t worry about me being aware of your hard work and dedication, I am aware of everything going on within the team” and by that she not only meant the results but definitely the hard work, the long hours, the calls that she was not on but was hearing across the desk. So if someone has a say about me she as my boss also has pictures to verify upon. So, now when your boss definitely can’t see how serious or dedicated you are to your work, it's just the results that do the talking, and boy they can very well lie!

Coordination / asking for help is Tricky

I definitely found it easier to just stand up and look around for the person of interest than going onto communicator, checking the availability light, and waiting for the person to reply. On top of that if you are new to the team when you don’t know anyone it feels another level of awkwardness to ping a random person every day for your petty issues until you officially annoy them and they stop you replying.  But you have no option but to ask as otherwise you’ll be called a slacker and even worse will miss the timeline which you definitely don’t want in your beginning period or should I say probation period.

Knowledge Transition becomes another level difficult

I remember when I was a mentor or was getting mentored we use to have typical one-to-one classroom or at least workstation sessions every day, followed by observing them while doing the actual work. With people working from home knowledge transition feels another level of difficulty, it's like getting online classes with a catch that you have to :

practically apply the just learned topics into your new assignment on the real-world data, which is going to be submitted to real people and you can really get fired if done wrong! 

Sometimes the presenter is explaining something and you are understanding something else and the worst part is there are no theory books or material to go back to do the catching upon (except your notes that’s also on the basis of your understanding). Then all you are left with are bits and pieces written in your notebook which you somehow try to make sense out of and try not to mess things out.