Onboarding Buddies

Onboarding Buddies

Insight from GitLab

Building remote teams is tough.

You’re not just fighting mouse-jiggling apps, you’re contending with the alienation new remote-first employees feel.

Over 50% of remote employees reported feeling less connected to their teams and company's culture. Onboarding processes for remote-first teams are, in many cases, severely lacking.

But it’s not all bad. We found a simple step that GitLab (and other culture-first companies) use to get new remote hires integrated right away.

Assign new hires an onboarding buddy - preferably a senior teammate to:

• Greet them at the start and end of their first day (GitLab pairs team members in the same timezone to make those calls more seamless)

• Give them a tour of the most useful Slack channels and helpful pages of the company handbook (we love documentation 🤝)

• Organize a group call to introduce the new employee to the rest of the team

Thinking beyond the first week, pairing new hires with an onboarding buddy also sets them up for a very organic mentorship program.

It’s a small step that goes a LONG way in building a strong culture, especially in remote-first teams.

Learn more: How to be a good ops boss to a remote team