My Top Tips For Hiring & Training Remote Team Members

By Amber Salgado

Today on the podcast we discuss the ups and downs of being a completely remote firm. One of the biggest struggles any 100% remote business has is hiring and training employees and maintaining that team-like atmosphere and company culture.

As the Director of Operations for Stratlign, I have put in a TON of time figuring out some best practices for remote employees, so read on for all my tips and tricks...

Hiring:

• Make sure you ask questions about remote work experience
• Do they have any remote experience?
• What struggles did they find with working remote and how did they overcome them?
• What is their set up like at home – do they have a dedicated workspace free of distractions?
• How did they make sure they formed a connection with their teammates?
• Be sure to talk about how you connect your staff in a remote environment and let it not effect your company culture, etc.
• Go over remote working policies so they know exactly what is expected of them.
• Workspace requirements
• Video etiquette & expectations for attire/looking professional
• Are they allowed to log in whenever or is it a strict schedule – if flexibility, how much?

Onboarding:

• MEET, MEET, MEET
• I suggest twice a day to start for the first two weeks – beginning of the day and end of their day.
• Then switch to once a day for the next two weeks.
• Then switch to once a week for the following month. Then to normal 1-1’s.
• Meet the TEAM! All of them, individually. – Set up 15-minute meetings for intro and role explanation.
• Get your onboarding as streamlined as possible and have it hosted in a transparent place that you can easily see and track progress.
• GET FEEDBACK
• On your daily checks, After the first day, After the first week, After the first month – is this what you expected it to be, what do you need, etc.
• GIVE FEEDBACK
• Consistent feedback catches mistakes quickly and addresses them accordingly. Create plans for improvement when needed – earlier the better.

Training:

• Have a dedicated training mentor with a clear schedule. Make sure that mentor has the capacity to not only train based off schedule but also get their days interrupted frequently with questions, etc. Their schedule should align with the new hires and any schedule discrepancies should be filled with a secondary “go-to” team member.
• Set expectations for when tasks should be known, mastered, etc.
• Even though they have a dedicated training mentor, involve the rest of the staff in some training – perhaps a program or internal process. This helps build a bond and get the team to know one another.
• VIDEOS VIDEOS VIDEOS (In addition to written processes and “hands on” training) This helps them interrupt their training mentor less and gives them something to reference while trying to complete tasks solo. The smaller and more broken down these videos can be, the better. This saves time spent searching through an hour-long video for one topic. For example – don’t have a “bookkeeping process” video where you go through a whole client. Have a “how to enter a check” “how to enter a payroll journal entry”, etc.

Hope you find these tips helpful. You can listen to the entire podcast episode wherever you listen to podcasts - just search 'Owners & Operations - Accountants'

Have a great weekend!