Create remote employee onboarding flows that work to decrease time to job success.
Remote employee onboarding is not the same as regular onboarding. Without sitting opposite your new employee, you’ve reduced time for questions, natural awareness of team members and processes plus the sharing of knowledge that happens by the water cooler.
Related: All you need to know about the employee onboarding process
So, you devise a 20 step remote employee onboarding plan.
But will employees actually follow it? And if they get stuck on step one, who’s to say they’ll ever finish it if their manager isn’t aware X, Y and Z needs to be done.
Keep reading to learn how to go past just enrolling new team members in a process and forgetting about it, and creating better remote employee onboarding flows that work.
You’ll learn:
- What onboarding is and the difference between regular onboarding and remote onboarding
- The importance of remote onboarding
- Common remote onboarding challenges
- Plus specific tips to improve your remote onboarding experience
Let’s get started.
What is onboarding?
Before we get started, first things first, onboarding is the structured process of helping new employees transition from “new hire” to confident, productive team member.
It goes far beyond paperwork and system access.
Good onboarding introduces people to your culture, expectations, tools, processes, and most importantly; how to succeed in their role.
And the stakes are high.
According to Gallup, employees who experience strong onboarding are 2.6x more likely to feel prepared and supported at work.
What’s the difference between onboarding and remote onboarding?
Traditional onboarding benefits from proximity. New hires overhear conversations, pick up on unspoken norms, and ask quick questions without scheduling a call. They learn by observing how others work, communicate, and solve problems.
Remote onboarding doesn’t have any of that.
Instead of learning passively, remote employees must rely almost entirely on what you’ve intentionally documented, scheduled, or automated.
If something isn’t written down, explained, or built into a process, it often doesn’t exist for them.
That’s why remote onboarding isn’t just onboarding “done online.” It requires:
- More structure, not more steps
- Clear ownership of tasks and follow-ups
- Visibility into progress for managers and HR
- Deliberate moments for connection, not accidental ones
Without this, remote hires are left guessing. And when people guess at work, they usually guess wrong (or stop asking altogether).
Why is remote onboarding so important?
Remote and hybrid work isn’t a temporary shift.
It’s how many companies operate now. Yet onboarding processes haven’t always caught up.
Research shows that up to 20% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days.
Related: Key benefits of onboarding
For remote roles, that risk increases when employees feel isolated, unsupported, or unsure whether they’re doing the right things.
Remote onboarding plays a direct role in:
- Time to productivity
- Early engagement and confidence
- Long-term retention
- Employer brand
According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, employees who lack clarity on goals and expectations are 3x more likely to look for a new job.
Common remote onboarding challenges
Remote onboarding fails not because companies don’t care, but because they underestimate what’s missing. Or, because they expect employees to pick up what they haven’t given them.
Some core challenges found within remote onboarding include:
1. Too many steps, not enough guidance
A long checklist doesn’t equal a good experience.
Without context, new hires don’t know why a task matters or what “done” actually looks like.
And if you’re not giving the ‘why’ behind your work, it’s going to be hard to get new team members to care.
2. Lack of visibility for managers
If managers can’t see where a new hire is stuck, delays compound.
One missed system access request can derail an entire first week. While a verbal request comes easily in an office or work space, it’s less easy online.
3. Delayed or fragmented communication
Remote hires hesitate to interrupt. When questions pile up, frustration follows and that’s the kicker. You want to create spaces for new hires to meet new people, ask lots of questions, and get things wrong.
Doing that early means that all the “stupid” questions can get out of the way in the first few weeks, rather than delaying and your employee not feeling comfortable to ask down the line.
4. Missing human connection
This is the obvious one. Slack messages and documents can’t fully replace relationship-building, so without intentional touchpoints, new hires feel like outsiders longer.
Tips to improve your remote onboarding experience
Improving remote onboarding doesn’t mean adding more content.
To truly improve a remote onboarding experience, you need to create flows guide employees, adapt to real life issues and challenges and allow issues to surface early and easily.
Here are some key tips you can try to improve your remote onboarding process:
Use the right tools
There’s only so much success you can achieve via remote onboarding when you’re relying on a Google sheet or an outdated piece of HR software with a checklist.
Invest in onboarding software that supports your goals and makes integrating a new employee, easy.
From onboarding checklists and guided tours, to all the learning content they need to be confident in their role, up front.
A learning management system is going to give you the best bang for your buck when it comes to good onboarding.
💡 Why use an LMS for onboarding?
Design onboarding as a journey, not a checklist
A checklist tells someone what to do. A journey tells them where they’re going.
When onboarding is reduced to a long list of tasks, new hires focus on completion rather than comprehension.
They tick boxes without understanding how the pieces fit together or what “good” actually looks like in their role.
In a remote setting, this is especially risky because there’s no ambient learning to fill in the gaps.
Instead, structure onboarding around phases; such as day one, week one, and the first 30, 60, and 90 days, with a clear purpose for each stage.
For example, the goal of the first week might be orientation and connection, while the first 30 days focus on core responsibilities and early wins. At each stage, define what success looks like in practical terms, not just tasks completed.
Research from Harvard Business Review shows that employees who understand how their role contributes to team goals are 72% more likely to feel engaged.
Designing onboarding as a journey helps create that understanding early.
Automate visibility, not just tasks
Automation often stops at assigning tasks, but visibility is where the real value lies.
In remote onboarding, problems rarely come from unwillingness; they come from silence.
If a new hire is blocked on step three, and no one notices, momentum is lost quickly.
Managers may assume everything is on track, while the employee quietly struggles.
The solution is to automate visibility for managers and stakeholders.
This means real-time insight into what’s been completed, what’s overdue, and where someone is stuck without requiring manual check-ins. Notifications should prompt action, not just confirm completion.
According to SHRM, new hires are 3x more likely to feel supported when managers are actively involved in onboarding. Visibility enables that involvement without adding meetings or admin overhead.
Build feedback loops early
Remote employees are far less likely to speak up when something isn’t working, especially in their first few weeks.
That’s why feedback loops need to be built into onboarding itself, rather than waiting for a 30- or 90-day review. Short, structured check-ins during the first two weeks can surface issues before they turn into disengagement or doubt.
These don’t need to be time-consuming. A simple weekly pulse asking questions like “Do you know what’s expected of you this week?” or “Do you feel confident using the tools you need?” can reveal patterns quickly. The key is consistency and follow-through.
Gallup data shows that employees who feel heard early on are 4.6x more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. Early feedback loops send a clear message: support is ongoing, not conditional.
Make knowledge easy to find
If a remote employee has to ask where something lives, that’s a signal your knowledge isn’t accessible enough.
In an office, people can lean over and ask quick questions. Remotely, every question feels like an interruption—so many go unasked. The result is slower ramp-up, duplicated effort, and unnecessary frustration.
Centralised, searchable documentation reduces this friction.
This includes role expectations, team processes, FAQs, and “how we do things here” guidance. But just having documentation isn’t enough – it needs to be easy to navigate and kept up to date.
This is where an LMS shines too. The right platform can create onboarding dashboards for your new starters which will keep all the content they need, front and centre.
💡 Key LMS features that support onboarding
Create intentional moments for connection
Connection doesn’t happen accidentally in remote teams, it has to be designed.
Without deliberate effort, new hires can go weeks interacting only through task-based messages. This slows trust-building and makes collaboration feel transactional rather than human.
Intentional connection can take many forms: scheduled introductions across teams, onboarding buddies, informal coffee chats, or async “get to know you” prompts that fit different time zones.
MIT research has shown that teams with strong social connections are up to 50% more productive and communicate more effectively.
For remote employees, these early connections often determine how comfortable they feel asking questions later.
Track time to confidence, not just completion
Completing onboarding tasks doesn’t mean someone is ready to perform independently.
Many remote onboarding programs measure success by whether steps were completed on time. But this says nothing about how confident or capable a new hire feels once onboarding ends.
A more meaningful metric is time to confidence: when someone feels comfortable owning their responsibilities, making decisions, and asking informed questions.
This can be measured through manager check-ins, self-assessments, or milestone-based evaluations tied to real work outcomes.
Wrapping up
All of these methods are tried and true because we are 100% remote.
We’ve actually found one extra trick that works well too:
Use a platform that allows your teams to come together.
Whether that’s Slack, or an LMS – you can create social experiences via your tools.
Plus, with an LMS in place, you can track all of the above in one single-source-of-truth platform.
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