Onboarding Assistance VA

Onboarding assistance is when a company’s core values, policies, and programs are communicated to a new hire. All businesses need new employees to grow, but getting a new employee up to spec with the business’ tools, culture, and workflow requires time and effort from the existing staff. Sometimes, the sheer effort of doing this can block the team’s timely expansion, so it is crucial to create a good onboarding program to take care of this in the long term.

Just having an onboarding plan is not enough. It is also essential to make sure that onboarding takes into consideration how employees feel. Since it is the first real employee experience your new team members will have, the onboarding process must be monitored and improved regularly. Role clarity, culture integration, and access to the company’s infrastructure should all be appropriately imparted during onboarding.

From executive onboarding to dealing with the day-to-day hiring of administrative or novice staff, a company’s human resources department needs to dedicate time and effort to this important task. After all, according to The Predictive Index, effective onboarding can result in increased employee engagement in around a third of your workforce, and can also increase job satisfaction by as much as thirty times.

An onboarding assistance virtual assistant is someone who can take the time-intensive onboarding tasks and also look at the process to help optimize it. An onboarding VA can concentrate on this integral part of the employee experience and free up your company’s human resource management team’s time for higher-level tasks.

Your onboarding assistant is not just limited to creating and ticking off a checklist of things to do whenever there is a new hire. Higher-level onboarding assistants can do a lot of things that a hiring manager would usually have to handle, such as:

Create, evaluate, conduct, or improve your company’s formal onboarding process

This has to do with the more traditional aspects of employee onboarding. An onboarding assistant can help create a step-by-step process for welcoming new hires and craft a checklist for both the employer and employee requirements. This way, each new employee will have a smooth first day at work. Your onboarding virtual assistant also explains the new employee’s roles and responsibilities.

Process onboarding paperwork

Onboarding assistants don’t just work with the new hires. They should also be able to link these employees with the company in multiple ways, the most basic of which is being able to handle new hires’ contracts and other related paperwork.

Work with the HR team to craft policies and create employee handbooks

Your onboarding virtual assistant is your primary resource for insight into your new hires’ thoughts and preferences. As such, your onboarding assistant should be able to cooperate with the rest of the team to create a new-hire-friendly set of policies — one with corporate or culture-specific terminologies and processes explained in a manner that is understandable from an outsider’s point of view. This way, new hires will be better equipped to self-troubleshoot any problems they may encounter.

Address concerns of new hires

Onboarding virtual assistants must be able to support new hires, as they represent the company to the new hires until they are fully integrated into the business. Onboarding virtual assistants don’t need to be able to answer all of the employee’s questions fully, but they should be able to endorse a new hire’s concerns to the relevant parties, as well as coordinate between them if necessary.

Integrate new hires with the company culture

Employees are human and need human nuance. It’s not enough to craft and execute a checklist. An onboarding virtual assistant must also make new employees feel like they are genuinely part of the company so that the new employee can make connections and put down roots. Cultural fit can contribute significantly to employee satisfaction and retention. This is especially important because employee satisfaction is correlated with customer satisfaction, especially in industries that require a lot of customer service and interface.

Create or facilitate mentoring programs

Onboarding isn’t necessarily a one day or even a one-week affair. For more complex company structures or roles that require a more in-depth understanding of the business, it may be necessary to have a 30-day or even a 90-day plan on hand. One way to do this is by creating mentorship plans for new hires. An onboarding assistant can identify the need for such comprehensive programs and identify the correct mentor for the new hire, considering the personalities and job descriptions of both old and new. They can also coordinate with both mentor and mentee and help smooth out any issues that may arise between the two

We’ve all heard the age-old adage of “first impressions last,” and your onboarding assistant is your employees’ first real contact. As such, onboarding virtual assistants must present an excellent front to your new hires. Some skills you will want your onboarding virtual assistant to have to make sure they are qualified to represent your company are:

• Excellent verbal and written communication
  Since your onboarding assistance virtual assistant is your new hire’s first official touchpoint in the company, they should be clear, articulate, and approachable. This way, not only will new hires have a favorable impression of your company, they will also be better geared for functioning correctly within your business right off the bat.
• Excellent collaborative drive
  Your onboarding assistance virtual assistant must be able to work with the rest of the human resources management team and other departments to create workflows and materials that will suit new hires. This way, welcoming packets will not be entirely generic but include specifics of their roles or teams whenever necessary, thereby easing new employees’ integration into your company.
• Experience with human resource management systems OR workflow management systems
  Onboarding assistance virtual assistants should be able to work within your existing workflow. Even if they have not used the particular management system your company is using, they should be familiar with using other similar methods to coordinate with the rest of the team. If your company currently does not use any workflow or human resource management system, they should be able to recommend a plan to track and optimize the efficiency of onboarding.
• Bonus points: basic knowledge in labor laws
  Being familiar with basic labor laws will enable onboarding assistance virtual assistants to address new hires’ possible concerns better. If they do not have this background or knowledge, they should be open to learning the basics, at least enough to answer frequently asked questions by new hires.

Hiring an onboarding assistance virtual assistance, you must first identify your needs. List down what you need your onboarding assistance VA to do, and then elaborate on the skills, personality, and other requirements based on that. You must then gather candidates, shortlist their applications, and interview the shortlisted applicants to see who is most qualified and the best fit for your company. And then, you must onboard your onboarding assistance VA yourself, so that they can take over and improve this process for you later on.

Hiring an onboarding assistance VA can be a lengthy process, which is why it may be best to look into trusted virtual assistant agencies with excellent reviews, like 20four7VA, to handle most of this for you. With the right agency like 20four7VA helping you out, you can concentrate on identifying your needs and then interviewing candidates, and 20four7VA will handle the rest. This frees up your time to do higher-level work for your business, instead of sifting through the internet for suitable candidates and reading through many applications.

Onboarding assistance virtual assistants can cost around $65 per week for 10 hours a week but can go up to hundreds of dollars a week, depending on your needs. One of the benefits of engaging a company like 20four7VA is that you can choose a VA that fits your exact requirements. You can choose between full time or just a set number of hours a week part-time, and select the level of expertise of onboarding assistance VA that you need. This way, you get more bang for your buck, with less hiring hassle to boot.