3 Principles of Effective Onboarding

Organizations that outsource and hire remote workers gain a competitive advantage. They fill vacancies faster, easier, and choose from a much more diverse pool of applicants. However, in order to reap the full benefits this mode of hiring offers, you’ll need to apply these successful onboarding principles.

1. Don’t view developers as ‘code monkeys’

It is a widely held belief that a team of developers can solve the most complex problems a company is facing – but only when it’s authorized to act. Many teams feel excluded and reduced to the role of ‘code monkeys’. Invest time and effort to ensure your developers really understand what are the project assumptions. This shall include business goals and priorities, the so-called ‘user pain points’, and technical requirements. Applying this approach will enable your team to properly analyze specifications, develop functionalities, and build projects that take future functionalities into account. It will also help to instill a spirit of self-organization and increase personal commitment of each team member right from the start.

2. Give them an insight into the company’s structure, processes, and tools

Managers are often keen to ‘throw employees in at the deep end’ in the hope that they will learn everything themselves and with no extra support. Provide guidance and direction to your employees and you will enable them to grow.

We realized that conducting an IT architecture review makes for a smooth onboarding of developers. At Connectis, we guide remote developers through different areas of the codebase, highlight technology, focus on preferred patterns, and point to team members who can provide further guidance in specific areas. A great way to add value while facilitating the growth of your developers is to assign small, non-critical tasks – such as well-defined functions, bug fixes, test coverage – that are scattered around different areas of the codebase. Introducing your developers to different parts of the system in a careful and considered way will give them a better and more holistic understanding.

We also use Pair Programming to accelerate onboarding. A group of developers works on the same part of the code in real time, which gives current team members the opportunity to discuss decisions and receive feedback. This increases product quality and enables new developers to learn about the project decisions made by the team. Pair Programming is also a fantastic tool in terms of knowledge and experience sharing within a team.

3. Support collaboration

Your remote developers should participate in the same discussions as the on-site team members. In order to facilitate these interactions and foster regular collaboration, you may reach for a number of tools designed to improve remote work. An important aspect of joining a new organization is its culture. Encourage all team members to participate and provide feedback. When remote employees feel they contribute to the success of your company culture, their loyalty will increase.

It’s been proven that remote employees have a positive impact on company competitiveness. While 32% of employers report difficulties finding skilled workers, only 1 in 10 implement alternative hiring models – and it’s precisely these employers who go on to achieve a competitive advantage. The above rules are simple and will help to better integrate remote developers with your on-site team as well as reap the benefits of increased efficiency, cost and time savings, and scalability.