Today, the world has become a global village, and things are easier and more convenient due to advanced AI and HR technology stacks. In this globalized world, remote work is becoming the norm, as we have seen that many international companies are involved in hiring talent from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Companies are more focused on innovation and creativity than typical job tasks, and they search for talent across the world to bring a wealth of perspectives and innovation. However, this practice also brings challenges for companies, especially when we talk about onboarding remote employees and developing a cross-cultural team.
But the question is: how do you manage remote employee onboarding and make an effective cross-cultural onboarding process? In this article, we will find the answer to these questions by not just letting you know the importance of cross-cultural onboarding, why it matters, and what the strategies are for effective cross-cultural onboarding.
Why Cross-Cultural Onboarding Matters
Cross-cultural onboarding goes beyond the standard introduction to your company’s policies and procedures. During this onboarding process, where you hire talent from Gobally for a remote job, you should understand and respect your new employee’s diverse cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, if your company is doing typical hiring, for example, locally, they don’t face such challenges as compared to remote employees.
In cross-cultural onboarding, especially when it comes to remote onboarding, you have to ensure that your onboarding process is inclusive and implemented in such a way that it meets the needs of every individual who belongs to a different culture.
Although this is not that easy to do, of course some key strategies may be helpful if you follow them, which we will discuss later here.
Benefits of Effective cross-cultural onboarding
If you have effective remote onboarding in your company, then you can get these key benefits, which have a direct impact on your company.
Fosters Inclusivity Within the Company:
Effective cross-cultural onboarding helps your company make its employees feel valued and understood. If employees feel valued, they will bring value to your company with their performance.
Develop More Engagement:
As we know, effective engagement between the team is crucial, especially when you have both employees—those who work on-site and those working remotely from anywhere. Practically, an effective cross-cultural onboarding process helps you build a strong connection between remote employees and the company, which results in more engagement as a whole.
Enhance Employee Retention:
It is not easy for the companies or for you as a recruitment manager to find highly talented employees, and with this, the more challenging situation is to retain them. If you and your company find any potential cultural discrepancies early on, then you can reduce the risk of turnover or retention issues with key talent. This also shows the effectiveness of cross-cultural onboarding is linked to retaining remote talent.
Key Challenges in Cross-Cultural Onboarding
Before we discuss some strategies and solutions for you, it’s important to understand the key challenges that come with onboarding cross-cultural remote teams:
Barriers to Communication:
When you do cross-cultural onboarding, the first thing you, as a recruitment manager, or your company itself, face is a communication barrier, which is common because your remote team has a divergent background and works globally in different regions. In this case, your company will definitely face language differences, which lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication, which is not a positive sign for your company.
Cultural Differences Inside Work:
Cultural difference is another challenge that you might face in cross-cultural onboarding, e.g., differences in social norms and values, and more importantly, work ethics bring different expectations where each one has a different attitude and interactions toward the company hierarchy, which no doubt impact overall collaboration between the team.
Time Zone Coordination:
Another challenge is time zone differences and coordination accordingly, because when you do cross-cultural onboarding, you have to make careful plans regarding meetings and initiating training sessions for new employees. Due to the fact that one place has daytime and another has midnight,.
Lack of a Sense of Belonging:
When you have face-to-face interactions, they have different results, but in remote jobs, when you do remote employee onboarding, you may face challenges in adjusting them to the company culture. In remote jobs or hybrid working models, your employees may struggle to feel connected with the team, especially when it is about building trust and relationships.
Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Onboarding
After a brief discussion on the importance of cross-cultural onboarding and its benefits, the question that needs to be answered is: What are the strategies for effective cross-cultural onboarding? or how to make a successful cross-cultural onboarding experience for your company?
You have to work on these key strategies to make your cross-cultural onboarding process more effective:
1. Develop a Culturally Inclusive Onboarding Plan
Design a Customizable Onboarding System:
You should design a customized system that is responsive to the remote employee’s needs, e.g., a system and procedure based on various language options that help employees from diverse cultures undo and adjust themselves in the early stages of onboarding.
Organize Cultural Sensitivity Training:
The training system that you design for new employees during remote onboarding should include training on cultural awareness and sensitivity that should support both new and existing employees in your company.
Indulge Localized Onboarding:
When implementing your onboarding sessions for new employees, you should consider local customs, e.g., local holidays, and local norms and values.
2. Enhance Communication and Collaboration
Use Clear and Simple Language:
When you do cross-cultural onboarding where you have employees who speak different languages, it will be effective to use clear and simple language in all onboarding materials that help you minimize misunderstandings.
For example, in some European countries, they have their own language, which makes it somehow problematic to get connected with each other and build relationships. This can be overcome by designing a system and all the materials in a way that everyone feels comfortable understanding and applying.
Leverage Technology:
As AI is more advanced, many HR solutions cover every area of HR, e.g., performance, collaboration, communication, and support. You can leverage these technologies to implement tools that support real-time communication, translation, and time zone management.
3. Encourage Connection and Inclusion
Arrenge Virtual Meet-and-Greets:
You can organize virtual meet-and-greet sessions regularly in the beginning. This will help new employees connect with their colleagues remotely. When they connect and develop an understanding of the work more efficiently as a team.
Introduce Cultural Exchange Programs:
One of the common practices and our favorite strategy that encourages coordination and inclusion is to design and implement cultural exchange programs. These programs help your employees, both new and old, share their cultural backgrounds and traditions with each other. The more they understand such differences, the more they develop inclusion between them, especially when working together as a team.
Buddy System Inside Company:
if you have a buddy system within your company where you allow to pair any new employee with a “buddy,” who basically helps the newcomers understand the company culture and processes. This unconventional system is more fruitful when you are more focused on hybrid models or remote jobs than on-site hiring and onboarding.
4. Consider Time Zones & a Work-Life Balance
Design Flexible Schedules:
When you offer flexible working hours to your remote employees, you basically value their different time zones and personal commitments, which are crucial for better performance, as flexibility means letting your employees design their job hours. This kind of flexibility motivates them to take ownership of the company, which is a key factor in performing remote jobs.
Inclusive Meeting Hours:
When you work remotely, you need to have an online meeting with your team twice a week or more. In a remote working environment, there are no specific time zones for all of you. Under such circumstances, it is best practice to set different meeting times instead of one specific time for all meetings. Flexible meeting hours ensure that all of your team members can participate at a reasonable hour without facing any problems.
5. Gather Feedback and Continuously Improve
Regular Feedback Surveys:
When you manage the remote employee onboarding process where your employees have cultural differences, the only thing that matters most is your new employee’s feedback and experience of their onboarding process, especially in terms of their cultural aspects. Gather feedback through surveys and try to indulge in a variety of language options for a better response.
Iterate and Adaption:
when you have such feedback from such employees in a regular way, you can use this feedback to continuously improve your onboarding process and make it more inclusive and effective.
To sum up the keynote
In order to make your onboarding process successful for your remote employees who have diverse backgrounds, you may need to work on different factors, e.g., cultural sensitivity, connectivity, inclusion, etc.
If you make a plan that helps you understand these challenges and implement the strategies that we discussed already, then you basically design an onboarding process as HR manager or recruiter where your new recruiters feel a sense of belonging or connectivity, which gives them the confidence to show their skills, grow your company further, and achieve the targets.
The purpose and effectiveness of the cross-cultural onboarding process is to build a higher-performing remote team for your company or business.
What is the bottom line?
The bottom line is that you can manage remote employee onboarding processes globally when you have designed and implemented an effective cross-cultural onboarding process in your company.
What we hope from you
We hope that this blog post helps you understand how to manage remote employee onboarding for cross-cultural teams.
If you have any questions to ask, you are welcome to leave a comment below or get in touch with us at support@workwisdoms.com.
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