Thanks for sharing your experience with onboarding virtual team members. It’s great to see that you recognize the challenges, prepare for them upfront, and support your people along the way! I love the idea of specifically preparing employees for the changes they’ll encounter if they haven’t worked virtually before. Great advice!

For the die hards that have been working virtually for a long time, I have found that they ask the questions needed to structure expectations for themselves and ours of them.

The biggest challenge I’ve seen in the new virtual worker is the pendulum swing from working ALL the time to being unreliable, then finally calming down a steady stream.

What I’ve found is that a large part of that pendulum swing for our new folks is not about the work itself, but about adjusting to the environment of working from home: feeling isolated, depressed, out of the loop and out of control. I’ve combated that with our folks by either being or assigning them a ‘veteran buddy’ who touches base with them daily (sometimes multiple times a day) about work AND how they are adjusting.

I forewarn our new virtual worker of some of the pitfalls of working from home exclusively and provide them a packet of informational links and articles I’ve put together to help them prepare and combat those issues. I encourage them to talk openly about how they are coping with the changes they are experiencing in both their work and personal life as a result of their new way of working with their ‘buddy’, their friends and family.

It’s been our experience that taking the holistic approach and honoring the changes in their lives and work has equated into higher retention and a smoother transition.