Remote Onboarding for the Modern Workforce

Remote onboarding is becoming the new normal, and if your company doesn't adapt to the new work environment, your company will be left behind.

What is remote onboarding?

Remote onboarding is the process of assimilating a new employee into the company and teaching them corporate policies, but doing so over technology, whether that be video, phone, or chat.

Remote onboarding and modern workforces

A remote workforce is the norm in many industries and job markets rather than the exception. More people work from home than ever before. Many enterprises are learning that supporting a remote workforce, once the right technical infrastructure is in place, can be cost-effective and responsive to modern challenges.

The challenges that arise from such a workforce, however, come in a few critical areas:

• Paperwork: Employers must obtain specific employee documentation, including tax forms, waivers, and identification documents. In person, this isn't a problem, but remote document exchange and verification can prove difficult in many cases.

• Training: Employees often undergo on-site training with a mentor they shadow throughout the day. With a remote workforce, making sure your people have the right hands-on training can be tricky.

• Resources: Outside of hiring paperwork, employees should have the resources they need to do their job, such as documents, records, or tools. They should have access to these resources when they start.

By far, remote onboarding ranks as one of the most challenging aspects of modern business. According to a survey from Sapling HR, employees must complete, on average, 54 onboarding activities.

These tasks involve critical document exchanges and administrative tasks, tasks that count toward areas like tax and compliance reporting, payroll and HR documentation, and basic training for the job.

Furthermore, these tasks will often pertain to security: creating identities for cloud platforms and HR services, signing up for MFA, and onboarding onto any compliant security measures, like identity proofing or document verification.

With that said, it's critical for enterprises to make remote onboarding easy and effective so that security and efficiency are maintained at every step.

Remote onboarding and security

Perhaps the most critical part of the onboarding process is worker identification, verification, and security onboarding.

The details of this may change depending on the company or industry, but generally speaking, employers are required to confirm worker eligibility and tax documentation. On top of that, any additional security or compliance requirements will invariably include additional authentication steps.

To support remote onboarding, several technologies can come into play:

Document and identity verification

An employer expects to have several documents completed during onboarding, including proof of eligibility to work. This includes several steps of identification and verification, prospects that can prove difficult in remote settings. That's where automated document and identity verification comes into play.

These technologies can help you ensure that a contractor or full-time employee provides accurate and truthful documentation, whether it's in the form of a driver's license, passport, or Social Security card.

Furthermore, these technologies can help enterprises with specific security needs verify identity through images, video chats, and other verification methods.

Finally, self-serve onboarding helps you scale the process without devoting more work hours and technology to it.

Authentication onboarding

Remote workers will need to access company resources, which means that authentication is critical. HR or the IT department will onboard employees into a multi-factor authentication system by providing credentials, but it's up to the employee to set up one-time passwords or biometrics from wherever they are.

Liveness testing and identity proofing

Spear and whale phishing are becoming more common, with many cases stemming from poor identity authentication of contractors. Liveness testing can require users to authenticate alongside video confirmation of their presence, while identity proofing can use documents and other artifacts to ensure that whoever accesses system resources is who they say they are.

These technologies all address specific challenges related to fraud, misidentification, and noncompliance, all of which can be addressed with the right tools and practices.

What are some best practices for onboarding remote employees?

Even with the right technologies, it's critical for an enterprise to practice strong, secure onboarding for all remote workers and contractors. These practices complement secure technology to provide an organization with easy onboarding and to protect company resources.

Some best practices include:

Allowing self-service onboarding

Depending on your platform, self-service onboarding may be an option. This can include using mobile devices to perform identity proofing and liveness tests, scanning documents for automatic identity verification, and streamlining authentication credential setup.

With a streamlined onboarding process, you remove the chances that information is lost during communication or that workers will use substandard practices due to the difficulty of the process.

Furthermore, as onboarding technologies improve, verification's effectiveness, security, and accuracy will make the process even easier.

Assign dedicated staff to onboard

If workers are currently in the onboarding process, ensure that you have a dedicated person assigned to help them. This includes answering questions, directing information to the right people, and ensuring that workers always send information where it should go.

This goes beyond orienting the employee. It helps minimize confusion in setting up critical functions like technology and services and avoids problems that IT would otherwise have to dedicate time to deal with.

Create easy-to-follow task lists and expectations

A simple and effective onboarding task list could live in your project management tool. Give workers access to this list and allow them to work through the items at their own pace, check off items they complete, and communicate via comments or direct messages to streamline the process.

Create community

Remote work can be isolating, and onboarding often serves as the primary way that workers get to know their colleagues. Even if you use remote, self-serve onboarding tools, make sure to create open spaces of communication for new workers through remote events and interactive activities. This can help make those workers feel invited and welcome and reduce the isolation that can come from the nature of remote employment.

Streamline remote onboarding with 1Kosmos

At the heart of onboarding is verification and security, which doesn't change when workers are remote. Employees must be able to set up secure credentials from wherever they are for a host of services, and employers must have the ability to verify the identities and documentation of those workers.

1Kosmos provides a distributed, streamlined, and secure platform to support remote employee onboarding.

For a demo, reach out to our sales team here.