The new reality of onboarding remote workers has human resources (HR) and learning and development (L&D) teams stepping out of their comfort zones. These teams are under pressure to deliver high quality, tech savvy virtual onboarding experiences, despite a legacy of processes, materials and practices not designed for it. And the stakes are higher than ever.

Failure to deliver onboarding that resonates with employees creates disengagement, higher turnover rates, miscommunication, and ultimately, a stunting of an organization’s growth. Onboarding remote staff can present so many unique challenges around delivery and engagement that it requires a rethinking of the entire experience. But all is not doom and gloom even for organizations with constrained budgets. In this article, we review four steps to designing culture into your remote onboarding program.

4 Ways to Revamp Onboarding for Remote Employees

The four steps to creating a culture from day one for your remote new hires include:

1. Translate your current onboarding program into virtual-friendly formats and delivery channels.

Are your current onboarding practices built for virtual onboarding — or just carried over by habit? It might be time to adapt, streamline or cut what no longer fits. This is where mapping comes in. Use this process to determine if you should adapt your onboarding materials or create something new.

Here are some questions to get your assessment started:

• What is the purpose of the process/activity/material?
• How is the in-person version delivered?
• What is the functional purpose of the activity/material?
• Is it appropriate/needed for remote staff?
• Do your new hires have consistent tech?
• Are your new hires comfortable in the same language?
• Are your materials expected to serve all employees or separated into different groups by country or job type?

Once you understand where you stand, you can then think about weaving in your culture-building elements.

2. Find opportunities to foster connection and belonging within your organization’s digital environment.

In this step, think about how you can craft an experience that creates connections for staff. Like mapping, the identification process is about taking inventory. But the focus is on how your organization uses onboarding to welcome new hires into their new community.

As you evaluate what you’re currently doing, really pay attention to the challenges of engaging with your remote staff while you reflect on potential solutions. For example, if language is a challenge, you may want to look at translation services (human or AI) as part of your solution. Or find same language coworkers to act as mentors or to cross check your artificial intelligence (AI) translation for accuracy. Regardless of your challenge, you’ll want to focus on using every opportunity to create a sense of community between your new hires and the rest of the organization.

Here are some questions to get you thinking about building connections:

• What do you already do to nurture bonds between employees?
• Do you host any get-togethers or gatherings for new hires?
• Do you pair up new hires with a mentor or “buddy?”
• What kind of communication tools does your organization use?
• Do those communication tools allow for simple automation or AI messing integration?
• Do you have platforms for employees to share interests?
• Do you have platforms for employees to discover mentors or coworkers to help with career guidance and planning?

By incorporating this information with your mapping inventory, you can begin sketching out ideas for translating the in-person version of the activity to virtual.

Here are a few examples of what this can look like:

1. New hire coworker hosts: A coworker greets you on their first day and acts as your social guide over the next week/month/year. The virtual version of this might be a combination of email, Teams/Slack/texting, and video conferencing with preset meeting times. The host would be given an expectations guide prior to the new hire’s first day to set them up for success.
2. New hire welcome automations: Set up messaging automations that welcome the new hires and send out helpful tips and tricks at pre-determined intervals to reinforce basic training and/or deliver culture touchpoints in bite-size packages.
3. New hire unit/division orientations: New hire unit/division orientations can become a hub-and-spoke style hybrid meeting where new hires in the same city meet at a local office to participate in a virtual meeting with team members in other office locations.
4. Reflect your brand and culture in your LMS design and training content updates.

During this step, ask yourself: “Are the materials aligned with corporate brand and values?”

Every aspect of the onboarding process makes an impression on your new hires. If the materials you’re sharing with new hires don’t reflect your organization’s current branding and values, that can convey a lack of preparedness, organizational disfunction, or that these new hires are an afterthought. Not a pretty look.

For fully remote staff, their opportunities to absorb organic expressions of culture are more limited than on-site workers so even small touches can have an outsized impact.

Here are some questions to help facilitate a discussion of brand and culture:

• Are your training materials up to date?
• Are they currently rebranding?
• Is the language and imagery used in your materials consistent with your organization’s brand and values?
• If your onboarding is tiered — starting with corporate and transitioning to regional or departmental training — does the experience feel cohesive, or do the phases feel disconnected and disjointed?
• Do you have branding and value guides, tools and templates to help managers create or deliver training that’s in alignment?

One important place where new hires continually encounter your brand and culture is your organization’s learning management system (LMS). Since your LMS is a well-visited digital space, it can become a useful channel for establishing and reinforcing your brand and culture. Most LMSs allow for some customization.

Depending on the platform, this customization could be as simple as making sure you’re using brand-approved colors, logos, language and imagery. But don’t be afraid to explore other ways that your LMS can be configured to express your brand and culture. Digital scavenger hunts, cohort sharing, gamification team building and much more might be possible. Your LMS administrator should be able to help you with the technical side of any customization ideas.

3. Use digital content to share your organization’s story and bridge cultural or learning gaps.

In onboarding, you’re introducing new hires to the organization and its story — so, how can you do that effectively? As you’re figuring out the nuts-and-bolts of adjusting your onboarding for virtual, it’s important to remember that onboarding can be more than a series of tasks to be completed. Onboarding provides an opportunity to share a narrative that can shape how new hires feel as they embark on their work journey. When done well, new staff feel welcomed, supported and a part of something exciting.

Here are some questions to help you shape your organization’s story:

• What story are you telling?
• What feeling do you want your new hires to come away with?
• What corporate values does your story reinforce?
• Are there challenges that are part of your story that you want to reinforce or address?
• What platform or channels are best suited for getting your story out?

When planning your onboarding experience, think beyond just what story you’re telling — consider how you tell it. With digital tools at your fingertips, you’ve got plenty of channels and formats to make it count.

Take the traditional in-person group orientation. It’s usually a way to share essential info and help new hires start connecting. But simply converting it into a 30-person Zoom call? That’s often a fast track to disengagement.

Instead, elevate the experience with a thoughtfully designed virtual orientation:

• Start with branded digital invites.
• Greet new hires in a dynamic virtual space with a live host, welcoming messages, and clear instructions.
• Deliver a high-energy experience — think short videos from leadership, interactive quizzes and polls, themed breakout rooms, and even fun formats like a SportsCenter-style broadcast or Jeopardy-inspired game show.

Make it memorable and accessible by recording sessions for on-demand viewing. Just remember —flawless execution matters. If you can’t deliver a polished, branded experience, reset your approach. A poor virtual event can do more harm than good.

Even with return-to-office trends, remote onboarding isn’t going away. Whether you’re adjusting for hybrid hires or reimagining your approach altogether, now’s the time to design onboarding that truly resonates.

Because virtual onboarding isn’t just a stopgap — it’s a strategic opportunity.