Returning to the physical workplace should involve re-introducing new hires along with re-orientating other employees
When the pandemic hit Canada in early 2020, it forced a major reorganization for many companies that had to quickly come up with arrangements for most employees to work from home. Now, with signs of the pandemic waning, some employees are coming back to the workplace and many employers are embracing the hybrid model.
Employers are faced with not only the challenge of re-introducing employees back to office life in some form, but also with integrating new employees hired during the pandemic into a workplace environment of which they haven’t been a part before.
Onboarding new employees is an important part of integrating them into the business and making sure that they become part of the team as efficiently as possible. However, if those employees were brought in during the pandemic when they and other employees were working remotely, they may be integrated into the business processes but have yet to be brought into the actual workplace. With a return to the physical workplace, these employees need to be re-introduced, or “re-onboarded.”
Before the pandemic, less than 10 per cent of Canadian employees worked remotely but by April 2020 — about one month after the advent of the pandemic in Canada — the percentage was up to almost 40 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. With the increase of employees working remotely along with many Canadians changing jobs during the pandemic, many employees were onboarded virtually and have yet to visit the office or meet their team in person.
This raises the necessity of a re-onboarding plan for companies that wish to smoothly transition employees to the physical workplace, says HR software company Humi, which has published a free guide called The Re-onboarding Handbook. It can include things like an office tour, social events, or extra training for technology that is used specifically in the office. The objective of re-onboarding should be to transition employees back to the office smoothly and make them feel confident and excited about being there, as opposed to nervous and disengaged.
Hybrid workplaces have become common and may be around for a long time, if not permanently. According to Humi, re-onboarding is particularly relevant for hybrid workplaces, as it can be useful for not only newer employees coming into the office for the first time, but also for employees returning to an office where there has been significant change, such as a new layout to meet distancing and sanitizing needs or a new location entirely.
Re-onboarding can level the playing field by ensuring that both remote and in-office workers have the right tools to do their jobs. It can also factor in how the hybrid model fits into the overall employee experience, says Humi.
Bringing employees back to the physical workplace after such a long period of time working remotely can involve some serious logistics, and re-onboarding should play an integral role regardless of whether an office is adopting a hybrid model or having employees return full-time, says Humi. Embedding re-onbarding into training of new and old employees coming back to the physical workplace can help the process go more smoothly.
For more information on employee re-onboarding, download a free guide from Humi here. You can find more information on Humi here.
