Tips for successful onboarding of remote augmented developers

Successfully onboarding remote augmented developers is key to running a development process. You need to make sure that temporary developers understand your company and your team. Moreover, you need to create a sense of belonging even if it is for a specific period of time. This way the newly hired software engineer will want to work for you and be more productive. A strong onboarding will lead to higher productivity, retention, and hopefully a boost in company revenue.

Let’s explore what onboarding is and why you want it for your company. Moreover, let’s chat about how to run a successful onboarding of remote augmented developers. We will provide you with our tips and tricks. Lastly, we will explain the differences between onboarding augmented developers & permanent staff. So let’s dive in below.

What is onboarding?

The onboarding process for employees refers to the series of steps and activities that a company undertakes to integrate and orient new employees into the organization. It aims to provide them with the necessary knowledge, tools, and resources. Moreover, it helps software developers succeed in their roles and become productive members of the team.

The onboarding process typically begins after a candidate has accepted a job offer and continues for a specified period. The typical onboarding process usually ranges from a few days to a few weeks.

Some key phrases in the onboarding process include:

• Preboarding – This involves paperwork and processing important document
• Orientation – The first day or week of onboarding focuses on introducing the employee to the company’s culture, policies, and procedures.
• Training & Development – This stage involves providing job-specific training and equipping the employee with the skills and knowledge required to perform their role.
• Setting Expectations – Clearly communicating performance expectations. Along with objectives is essential for employee success. This involves discussing job responsibilities & performance metrics. Along with any relevant goals or targets.
• Integration and Socialization – Assisting new employees in building relationships within the organization. This is crucial for their sense of belonging and engagement.
• Continuous Support – Onboarding doesn’t end after the initial weeks. Providing ongoing support and resources.

By implementing a well-structured and comprehensive onboarding process, organizations can enhance employee engagement. Moreover, they can accelerate productivity, and increase employee retention rates.

Why do you need it?

So unfortunately many companies fail their employees both permanent and temporary by not really providing an onboarding process. You need to provide an onboarding process to welcome your employee to your company culture. Moreover, to help them better understand the processes and procedures in your company.

A strong onboarding process 👉 reduces employee turnover 👈, creates strong team bonds, and increases overall software development productivity. Also, having an onboarding process can help prevent issues in the future. You avoid misunderstands, errors, and project delays.

Why is onboarding so important?

Onboarding is important for a few reasons:

1. When you onboard a new employee you are able to introduce them to company culture. This way they have an idea, of how they fit in, especially interpersonally.
2. The new software engineer will feel more comfortable with his or her role. Moreover, they will understand team dynamics. Additionally, they will feel supported from the beginning and this creates a feeling that they can always reach out for support when they need it.
3. Any new hire that has a strong onboarding will also 👉 be more productive on your team 👈. This is because they will understand the ins and outs of your company. So they won’t waste time being confused about how your company functions day to day.
4. Many studies have also shown that strong onboarding will make employees more engaged. They will want to take initiative during projects because they will feel more comfortable doing so.

All of this will ultimately help your company boost its revenue and build a positive reputation. This is because the success of your employees is strongly linked to the success of your overall company.

Guide for successful onboarding of remote developers from IT staff augmentation services

We have created a guide on how to successfully onboard remote developers that are hired temporarily from an IT staff augmentation company. Let’s check out how 👉 integrating temporary coders 👈 with your team can be easy and make your cooperation run smoothly.

Provide a welcome package

The first thing you want to do is provide your temporary programmer with a welcome package. A welcome package can be a variety of things. It can be a box with company goodies sent to their home. It can be a virtual chat where everyone meets and gets to know each other. Moreover, it can be a custom video made by team members where they record messages for the new hire. It will help the new member feel welcome and part of the team.

Digital employee handbook and company culture

So depending on your company, you may have a digital employee onboarding process. This may include a handbook of company culture, processes, and procedures.

Something that we have noticed in terms of an onboarding process, is to make sure that you don’t overload the new hire. It’s better to separate things out into stages so that the newly hired developer doesn’t get overwhelmed and retains information. You could give them an initial onboarding with all the must-have elements. While other aspects can be introduced in smaller doses. You only need to give developers information that will help them hit the ground running.

Another common trend we have noticed is teaching software engineers information that is really unnecessary. This is especially true with someone working with you on a temporary & staff augmentation basis, there is no need for them to learn about everything. For example, a temporary coder doesn’t need to know about the history of the company or details about the CEO or founder.

Overcommunicate or make explicit unspoken company norms

A common issue with remote development teams is a lack of communication. When working remotely the need for communication is amplified even more so. With remote work, you don’t have the opportunity to see what your fellow co-workers are doing. So the need for updates and status changes, etc. is super important. This needs to be made abundantly clear during the onboarding process. You should highlight the fact that you should communicate literally about everything. It’s better to overcommunicate than under-communicate.

Also, certain things that are common sense for your hiring managers, project management, and development team may not be so clear for new developers. For example, the way you communicate or how often. This is not clear for someone who is just joining your team. Some popular communication tools for remote work include Slack, Google Workspace, etc.

Create a sense of belonging & build strong relationships

You need to make sure that remote software engineers feel part of your dedicated software development team. You need to make sure that you create a sense of belonging for new team members on your existing team. Also, you need to make sure that your remote team still feels as though they were in an office space.

You can create a sense of belonging and build strong relationships with the help of virtual chats. The project manager can organize a coffee chat virtually to help team members get to know each other. Also, encourage open communication on all chat channels.

Provide an onboarding buddy

Remember on a school trip how you would have a buddy? It was fun and more secure, right? Well, during the onboarding process, you want to provide your augmented staff member with a buddy as well. The buddy can be around to help answer questions, show the new team member things, etc.

Get them up to speed about the project & development process they will be working on

So, if an augmented developer is joining your team mid-software development project, you need to get him or her up to speed. They need to know how the project was developed up and to this point. The direction that the project is headed. Also, where their specialized skills will fit into the software development project.

Introduce them to tools they will need on the job

You need to introduce the programmer to communication tools, organizational tools, and other tools they need for their job. Also, the faster you introduce augmented staff to these tools the quicker they can get acclimated to your company.

Schedule check-ins with new employees from a staff augmentation company

At the beginning of hiring someone, you need to check in with the temporary developer. Someone whether that be the Head of HR, a hiring manager, or a project manager, should check in with the new developer. It’s important they feel supported and that they feel on the same page with everything.

Make sure that your human resource department is available to new team members

Your human resource department should be available to developers hired through augmentation services. They should be there to support the onboarding process and answer any questions. Anyone working in HR should make the developer feel safe in asking questions in the future.

How is onboarding an augmented developer different from onboarding a permanent hire?

So there are a few differences between the onboarding process for permanent internal staff and augmented staff members. These differences include:

• You want to create two different onboarding processes
• Augmented staff needs access only to certain information, tasks, tools, etc.
• The onboarding process of remote augmented developers is an accelerated process

Let’s go into more detail down below.

You may need two different onboarding processes

So you may need to develop two different onboarding processes. One of these processes would be for temporary coders that you hire via 👉 IT staff augmentation services 👈. The other onboarding process would be for permanent hires. Each of these processes should be slightly different, and each company needs to decide for itself what is included in these processes.

One tip that we can share when it comes to creating an onboarding for augmented developers is to perhaps skip details about the company’s history, the history of the founder, etc. Even if they will be working with you for 6 months, 12 months, or longer, this may not be necessary to help them work well with your development team.

Augmented staff only need access to certain information

The beauty of hiring augmented software engineers is they only need access to specific information during the onboarding process. You should know what the developer needs access to, and what is redundant. It’s really up to you how much access you give them. This may also be dependent on how long the augmented coder will work with your in-house team.

If you partner with a staff augmentation vendor for a longer period of time, and therefore someone works with you for a long-term period. It may be beneficial for the augmented developer to have access to more information, rather than less. You need to find the right balance to make sure that your developer is in the loop and is productive.

Onboarding augmented staff is an accelerated process

Generally, the onboarding process of any augmented staff members should be faster. It’s faster mainly because there is less information that you need to provide a temporary coder.

As we have mentioned before, you really don’t need to provide software developers from a staffing vendor with all company processes & procedures. Therefore, onboarding should be much faster.

TL;DR: Quick tips on the onboarding process of remote augmented developers

Using software development staff augmentation services is useful to fill those pesky 👉 skill gaps 👈. But to have a successful project, you need to onboard remote augmented software engineers when they first join your team.

Some of our tips during the onboarding of remote augmented developers include:

• Provide a welcome package
• Digital employee handbook and company culture
• Overcommunicate or make explicit unspoken company norms
• Create a sense of belonging & build strong relationships
• Provide an onboarding buddy
• Get them up to speed about the project they will be working on
• Introduce them to tools they will need on the job
• Schedule check-ins with new employees
• Make sure that your human resource department is available to new team members

There are so some key differences between onboarding someone who is working with your development team on a temporary basis. As opposed to someone who was hired as a permanent full-time employee.

The first big difference is that temporary developers who join your in-house team only need to learn certain internal team processes. They only need access to a limited set of tools, processes, and procedures. With that in mind, the onboarding process of augmented staff should be much faster. It should only take a few days, whereas, with full-time employees who are permanent members of staff, it can take a week or more.

Therefore, with these differences, business owners must keep in mind that they may need two onboarding processes. They may need one onboarding process for coders from a staff augmentation company. While creating a separate onboarding for permanent software engineers.

Have any more questions about the onboarding of remote augmented developers? 👉 Drop us a line 👈 and let’s chat. Let’s have a free no-obligation chat about hiring augmented staff and how to best onboard them onto your team.