Working from home, hiring and on-boarding remotely - what are our clients doing?
Thousands of employees across Australia now have to work from home in order to help contain the pandemic we find ourselves in.
People who typically work at their desks in offices are now working from their homes. Businesses that never managed a single remote employee now must manage their entire company remotely.
One of the biggest challenges at the moment is hiring and on-boarding employees 100% remotely. We are constantly being asked by our clients and candidates - what are companies doing about this?
Our Projects & Change team have been asking their clients how they’re managing to do this. Here’s what they’ve had to say:
How did you manage the transition from being in the office to working from home?
It was a little daunting at first. Once the penny dropped that this could be our new norm for 3-6months we knew we had to be brave and jump in. It’s working well so far and we’re still working on how to create deeper relationships with new people remotely and foster team building.
Thankfully, most of our systems are online/in the cloud so the technical transition was relatively easy. Changing the mindset of people has been the hardest part but we have been so impressed at how well people are adapting and I think we’re getting there.
After the initial panic of “how are we going to do this?!” was over, we realised we just had to get on with it and we started putting everything into motion. It’s an ever-changing environment right now so we just take it day by day, week by week.
What systems/apps have you found useful?
Interviewing has been fine. MS Teams or Skype works adequately well.
Zoom has been great for interviews and for holding team meetings. WhatsApp video and FaceTime have also been good for one-to-one catchups.
For signing contracts using e-signatures, Docusign has been really helpful.
Are you having any issues getting equipment to new employees?
Shipping gear to people is actually ok as we use a 3rd party provisioner (Triforce) who are still working as well as our Service Desk who are working remotely. The main problem is that you need to be on the network for the first login so if we’re able to, we get our new starters to go into their nearest branch to get their laptop. We’re still working on how to we will do this if new starters aren’t close to a branch.
It has been ok so far. Staff have been coming into the office to collect all the equipment they need. All other introductions are done via VC.
All of our employees have company laptops anyway. We used couriers and even Uber to deliver additional equipment (screens, keyboards etc.) initially to employees. Our IT support team is already remote so it’s business as usual when it comes to tech support queries.
If you have any other tips that have worked for your business – we’d love to hear from you! If you are looking for some advice around interviewing or on-boarding; please reach out to our Projects & Change Management experts:
Chris Eggleston - chris.eggleston@allurapartners.com.au