Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mark Belache. I'm president of TorontoJobs.ca. Have you adapted your onboarding program to the current environment that's basically virtual? Are you relying on old school methods to have new employees start with your organization? Now's the time to move to a virtual onboarding process for new employees. In this video, I'm going to share with you some best practices for virtual onboarding. Number one, let's talk about what onboarding is. Onboarding refers to the mechanism through which employees acquire the skills, knowledge, and behaviours in order to become effective in their new position. Effectively, what this means is getting employees up to speed with their job and their organization as much as possible. So number two point, embrace technology for the entire onboarding process. So it starts with the resumes, the application process, how interviews are conducted online, offers signed electronically, training videos, Zoom calls, and follow-up. Take advantage of shared screens and do everything as much as possible without touching one piece of paper. Next point is create a program and spread it out over a number of days, weeks, and months. Have it available electronically. Use Google Sheets or Google Docs. Helps you stay organized. Next point is emphasize your company's culture and values. Make sure that people who are connecting virtually can stay connected in many ways to the company. It's very difficult for someone to stay connected to a company when they're virtual, especially when they're just starting. Track the virtual training and onboarding as you progress. How's it going? Are you adhering to deadlines and the schedule that you had set? A virtual onboarding program also needs to be flexible and can adapt to employees' learning patterns. Some employees may learn faster. Some employees may be not as fast. So make sure that it's adaptable and flexible. Embrace the idea that you can't over-communicate. When you're onboarding, the more you can communicate with employees, the better it's going to be to get them onboarded with your organization. And make it fun. Make the whole process as fun as possible. Get the new employee set up as quickly as possible, but allow sufficient time for the employee to be comfortable at each step. Use tests to make sure that when an employee is at a certain level that you can move to the next level. It could be a written test, it could be verbal, whatever the case may be. Make onboarding visual and interactive as much as possible. Gone are the days of long training manuals where someone would have to sit there and read for half a day or a day just manuals. Get someone to act as a buddy for the new hire, someone that can help them settle in to their new role and have a connection to the company's values and organization. And finally, ask for feedback at various checkpoints to make sure the employee is engaged with you and make sure that they're engaged with the company in the process. Ask them how are things going, anything you'd like to change. So in conclusion, with companies moving to bring in bring as much as possible virtually, the onboarding process needs to be designed in such a way that is relevant, it's flexible, and adaptable to different people, different levels of employees, and is also engaging. Again, my name is Mark Bleich, I'm president of torontojobs.ca. I want to thank you for watching. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You can send me a connection request and I'm happy to connect with you. Also feel free to visit our social media pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and you'll find out more information about who we are, what we do. We post a lot of events and we host a lot of events and we post a lot of jobs and so on and so forth. So feel free to connect with me that way. I also wrote a book called Tales from the Recruiter, so you can check it out at talesfromtherecruiter.ca and it can give you some tips on doing some interviews. So thanks very much for watching and I hope to see you soon. Thank you.