Onboarding New Designers Shouldn't Be a Problem: How to Onboard a Remote Team

The pandemic years have caused an increase in employee turnover for various reasons. People realized they prefer flexible work conditions, and some experienced job loss and realized it wasn't as scary as it seemed before. Despite the crisis, people have become more demanding when choosing a workplace and are more likely to quit easily if the new place doesn't suit them.

To make employees love their new job from day one, it is essential to ensure a smooth onboarding process. Remote employees cannot enjoy all the benefits that in-office staff have, so it is even more important to make them feel comfortable. And this is not just about handing out tasks and assigning a corporate email address.

After spending time hiring an experienced designer, you feel relieved knowing that someone will now handle UX design. However, no matter how experienced this person is, it doesn't mean they can just dive into work without thorough preparation. The more time you invest in preparing the employee in the first few weeks, the more value they will bring to the company in the long run.

Rules for the Smoothest Remote Onboarding
1. Schedule Regular Q&A Sessions

You should be prepared not only for the new designer to ask you a lot of questions, perhaps even more, but also that in addition to answering current questions, you must set aside time to ask these questions yourself. Calls should not be long; often 15 minutes is enough. Regular short calls also help newcomers not feel abandoned in the mass of new information they need to process.

Many questions do not mean the designer does not know how to do their job well. Even if you are hiring an experienced specialist, they still need to know as much about your product as you do.

2. Give Designers Access to All Necessary Information (and Even More).

It's nothing new that you need to provide access to profiles and team workspaces in various applications. However, a common problem is when product managers provide only the most basic information about the product.

Naturally, you don't want to share all internal documentation with a person who is on a probationary period. On the other hand, additional information can be very useful for the designer's workflow.

3. Introduce Newcomers to Communication Channels

If new in-office employees assimilate into company culture immediately after arrival and almost automatically, it's more complicated for remote employees. First, company culture is less clearly manifested in online communication. And what is present is more subtle. You can simply call it communication style rather than the heavy term 'company culture'.

Here's an example. Many teams use Slack for internal messaging. The app's functionality is the same, but the ways of communicating in it are endless. Some teams spam group chats with memes, others prefer direct messages and avoid emojis.

Although most of these differences are unspoken, I'm sure your company has a few internal communication rules that you can explain to newcomers to help them avoid awkward situations. This can be discussed during a phone call, but if you notice that your company has quite a few rules, consider recording them in your onboarding guide.

4. Don't Limit Communication to One Person

Product managers or senior designers will likely do most of the onboarding work. Dedicating a lot of time for questions and check-ins does not mean newcomers shouldn't ask questions to other colleagues.

Give newcomers recommendations on who they can approach with various questions: developers, marketing director, HR manager, etc. This way, the designer will get to know more team members and won't feel awkward constantly bombarding you with questions.

5. Foster Personal Communication Among Team Members

This is one of the trickiest aspects of integrating remote employees into the company. If you've ever been to a corporate online party, you probably know they suck. Well, at least 95% of them.

So how do you compensate for the lack of conversations at the office kitchen? They used to seem so pointless, but with the shift to remote work, they turned out to be the missing link between team members. For new employees, it was a natural addition to the onboarding process—informal but very useful.

To fill this gap, you need to be creative. Depending on the relationships among team members, the solution may vary. For example, 'donut' meetings. All people should be randomly paired up. Each pair should schedule a video call where they can talk informally about anything (preferably not work). This way, employees get to know people from the company they might not otherwise interact with.

6. Don't Stop After the First Days or Weeks.

After the introductory phase, the designer is ready to start working on real tasks. At this point, many product managers breathe a sigh of relief and leave designers to their own devices. Here's an argument that might make you breathe again.

We know that the start of work is not the most productive period for most people. However, thorough onboarding can improve the situation. The more materials the product manager provides, the more efficient the designer's work will be. A newcomer may spend a lot of time researching when they could get the same information from the manager in a few minutes. That's why it's so important to explain the product roadmap, existing user flow, and technical requirements for future developments to the newcomer.

How to Conduct Remote Onboarding

First of all, open all accounts and provide access to team workspaces in Slack, Figma, Notion.

The next step is creating a concept: the designer chooses an idea and goes through the entire process from user flow through wireframes to visuals and animations. And each step, of course, goes through several iterations. The introductory assignment is designed to test in 'real time' how the new person handles the design process.

Next, the senior designer mentors newcomers and provides continuous feedback on their work, but new designers are encouraged to chat with colleagues and ask non-design questions to our HR manager.

Key Takeaways

This was a long text, but overall the rules for hiring remote designers can be summed up in a few words:

• Set aside time and patience to answer all questions
• Provide access to as much information as possible
• Ensure designers communicate not only with the product manager or senior designer but also with other team members.

Working with remote designers is not particularly difficult, at least according to our experience.