Boon or bane?

Team building is difficult when working remotely; but managers can take certain steps to ensure that new hires feel like they are a part of the team.

- WAYNE TURMEL

When Inderjeet joined her new organisation as a virtual employee on a project team, she assumed it would be similar to jobs she had worked on. It surprised her how long it took to get to know her teammates and how long it took to feel like she was truly part of the team’s processes. A young woman, she was unique in her employer’s primarily male, more experienced culture, and this seemed to complicate how the existing team members worked with her.

She is not alone. Onboarding new employees in a virtual workplace can take longer and be more complex than getting up to speed in a traditional workplace.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many organisations were focused on creating inclusive workplaces. Enhancing the geographic, gender, ability and other forms of diversity was an important but (for many) not necessarily urgent, goal. Many of these efforts stalled in the early days of working from home. Now, as they continue running business in new ways and planning for the future, there are unprecedented opportunities to create a more inclusive, welcoming workplace if organisations choose to do so.

The business, social, and political cases for widening their hiring practices are familiar to most readers. Some of the reasons are obvious: being able to recruit from a wider pool of employees, achieving internal goals for diversity, and becoming an employer of choice top the list, along with meeting legal requirements from various jurisdictions.

Many companies put efforts into recruiting and hiring from a larger pool of candidates. As great as it sounds, bringing people onboard is not the same as creating a high-functioning, productive work team, and certainly not the same as making it inclusive.