Onboarding for your team can be challenging, especially when done remotely. Without that in person connection, it’s hard to overcome feelings of isolation. For the same reason, keeping onboarding personalized and engaging can be just as difficult. Tools like Slack can help keep remote teams together, but it’s up to HR leaders to use the tools at their disposal effectively.

Slack integrations like CultureBot can be a massive boon for teams. In this guide, you’ll learn Slack hacks that will transform your onboarding process into a path to success for all of your new employees.

Streamline Onboarding Communications

There are so many things to worry about when dealing with onboarding new team members. It’s better to spend more time building genuine connections with new hires by automating any process you can. Use tools like CultureBot to automatically send personalized welcome messages.

In addition, you should be structuring your Slack workspace to reflect your needs. In this case, your need is onboarding! Make sure you have dedicated onboarding channels for each new recruit so you can focus on helping them get acclimated. You should also be scheduling check-ins and reminders to keep onboarding on track.

Ideas to Automate Onboarding Communications

Feeling stuck on where to start with getting more automation into your onboarding process? Here are some ideas:

• Personalized welcome messages: give your new hires a nice personalized welcome message once they join your Slack workspace.
• Personalized onboarding channels: when a new hire joins, automatically create a new Slack channel specifically tailored to a new hire or a group of new hires.
• Icebreaker questions and conversation starters: get new hires and your experienced staff talking every day with regular conversation starters generated by CultureBot.
• Mentorship groups: when new hires join your Slack workspace, automatically pair them up with mentors from your team to help them on their onboarding journey.

Foster Connections and Mentorship

The onboarding stage may be the most important moment for your new employees over the course of their time with your team. Matching new hires with a mentor who can introduce them to the rest of the team and show them how everything works is one of the best ways to make sure they are cared for and introduced to the team correctly.

Getting new hires comfortable and engaged should be another major goal for your HR team. You can facilitate introductions and icebreakers in your Slack channels with automatic daily icebreakers with CultureBot. Always being able to rely on CultureBot for a question of the day every day allows you to focus on engagement and getting other work done. It also encourages casual conversations in your watercooler channels.

Celebrate Milestones and Achievements

Keep track of how far your new team members have come and note when they complete onboarding tasks. When onboarding is complete, use automated congratulatory messages to celebrate your new hires’ progress.

You can do more than that. You can encourage your team to use CultureBot’s shoutout features to celebrate new hire successes. You can personalize each shoutout and you can even earn points for receiving them. Teams can redeem points for rewards chosen by team leaders, like company swag or gift cards.

Get New Hires Engaged with Online Games and Events

Another way to celebrate your new hires when they complete onboarding is online events and games. The best part is you can accomplish that without having to leave Slack! CultureBot lets you start instant games with your colleagues on Slack at the push of a button. They’re a fantastic opportunity to take a quick break from work and connect with your team in a healthy and fun way.

Gather Feedback and Insights

Your onboarding process shouldn’t be immovable. You should send pulse surveys to your new hires to gauge their satisfaction. By collecting suggestions from your new team members, you can improve your onboarding experience for everyone. Analyze that data to optimize your onboarding experiences over time.

How to Increase Your Response Rate

Your response rate is one of the first things on your mind when you think about gathering feedback. Here’s a few tips on how to increase your survey response rates with your team:

• Personalization: try sending personalized survey invitations to make their opinions feel valued.
• Focused: make sure your surveys are short and to the point. This will keep your team from feeling overwhelmed with questions.
• Small incentives: try offering a small reward to encourage people to participate. For example, if 75% of the team responds to the survey, everyone on the team will get some rewards points that they can use on team rewards like company swag.
• Send reminders: send regular reminders to get people answering the survey before the deadline hits.
• Accessibility: making surveys available on Slack is one of the best ways to get a higher response rate since that’s where information is most accessible to your team.

The good news is, CultureBot and a dedicated HR team can accomplish every step of this list!

Integrate with Existing HR Workflows

Make sure you synchronize your onboarding tasks and timelines with your HRIS to keep track of the new hire process. You should also automate your paperwork and signature collection processes. The faster and more efficiently you can get through all the necessary paperwork, the sooner you can start making those human connections with your new hires.

Consider consolidating your new hire information in a central Slack dashboard where it’s easy for your HR team to see what’s going on with your onboarding processes.

Case Studies: Onboarding Success Stories

Here are some stories of remote businesses that succeeded in cultivating engaging new hire experiences.

Neo

This marketing automation software startup was faced with the challenge of rapid growth of its customer sales and support staff. This new team operated entirely remotely because all of its staff weren’t consolidated and worked from home. Wanting a successful onboarding program, Neo chose a multifaceted onboarding strategy that went against the grain. They leveraged:

• Custom e-learning course.
• Live virtual ILT sessions.
• On-demand reference resources.
• Centralized onboarding portal where new employees could interact with one another.

Thanks to their successful onboarding program, Neo managed to increase their sales revenue three times after six months. Costs were significantly lower than if they had resorted to traditional classroom methods for onboarding.

The lesson here is that human-focused and digital onboarding programs work for remote workers. Your centralized portal for onboarding resources and new hire connections can be Slack. With a powerful tool like CultureBot to help automate and cultivate your team’s engagement, you can achieve similar onboarding results while also saving money.

360Learning

This learning and professional development platform utilizes a three-step process for onboarding virtual employees. It consists of:

1. Preboarding: first day communications and exchanges. Make sure new hires have all the materials they need, systems access, and planning your future coordination.
2. Induction: two-day process to welcome them. Encourage them to provide feedback throughout the onboarding process. Culture introduction.
3. Role-specific onboarding: dig deeper into the specific things a particular role needs to know.

Organize your onboarding into a process like this and focus on the particular work that you accomplish as a team. Your team culture will determine exactly what your onboarding process looks like. Develop a plan and stick to it but have an open mind and encourage new hires to offer feedback that can help you improve the process.

Getting Started with CultureBot

Onboarding is the process you need to focus on the most when bringing in new hires. Without a successful onboarding experience, you’re setting your team up for failure. Using the right tools is critical to your success, especially when it comes to the platform your team is using every day. Empower your new hires on Slack with CultureBot. With personalized welcome messages, shout outs, and daily icebreaker sessions, you can spend more time making valuable connections. Celebrate new hire achievements with personalized celebration posts and peer rewards. See how it can benefit your team today by booking a 15-minute demo.