C18HM – Human Resource Management
Option 3: Learning and Development
With the trend of recruiting remotely during the pandemic, the next big
challenge for employers lies in efficiently onboarding and training new
employees remotely. Discuss the problems with onboarding a remote
workforce, and what businesses could do to overcome that.
Word Count: 1,891
Mark: 65
Instructor’s comment:
Content/criticality: Provide general introduction to the topic, your argument and the main
points that you will cover in your introduction - don't go into detail. Good use of dividing
your content into software related issues and physical distance issues.
Relevance/accuracy: Interesting aspects covered throughout.
Citation- academic sources: Good range of sources, but you did not reach the mandatory 15.
Make sure you follow Harvard throughout and format the reference list consistently (don't
use bullet points etc).
Good use of industry examples
, Onboarding is the process of integrating new employees into the organisation,
through them gaining knowledge and learning methods, skills and behaviours from inside
the organisation in order to succeed in the organisation (Bauer & Erdogan, 2011, p.51). This
process is essential to the organisation with 64% of employees saying they will leave a job
within a year after a negative onboarding experience from a Hibob survey (Place, 2021),
negative onboarding experiences cost companies 37 billion dollars annually in the U.S. and
U.K. alone due to waste in resources and time. So, for new employees to flourish within
their new role in the organisation an effective onboarding experience is imperative. A new
challenge emerged for onboarding with the COVID-19 pandemic, staff could no longer work
in the office and were forced into working from home. This presented a fresh challenge for
many organisations as they tried to efficiently onboard new staff remotely. Original
challenges existed in onboarding i.e., Caldwell and Caldwell (2016) 10 classic onboarding
errors however remote onboarding brought about fresh challenges such as low motivation,
technical problems and the lack of social interactions which comes with remote onboarding.
In this essay we will breakdown these challenges and offer solutions to overcome them to
efficiently onboard a remote workforce.
A problem which can occur from remote onboarding is the low motivation for
completing the process. A general perception of learning online in comparison to face-to-
face is that with face-to-face there is more motivation to complete the course for example
in Batalla-Busquets and Pacheco-Bernal (2013) survey from CaixaBank 65.5% of staff found
face-to-face learning more motivational in comparison to online. A lack of direction from
remote onboarding can lead to staff losing the purpose of onboarding and leave them
unfocused. The beginning of a new job can for many bring about anxiety and pressure over
and so it is essential for the onboarding process to ease the new staff in and make them feel
comfortable in the work environment (Carlos and Muralles, 2021). Without the proper
structure prepared for the new staff this can compound the issues for them starting their
new job.
To help address the issue of motivation and refocus the staff during a remote
onboarding experience is to create structure to the day as if staff were in the office. A
structured day with start time, end time, times to allow for calls and lunch breaks needs to
1
Option 3: Learning and Development
With the trend of recruiting remotely during the pandemic, the next big
challenge for employers lies in efficiently onboarding and training new
employees remotely. Discuss the problems with onboarding a remote
workforce, and what businesses could do to overcome that.
Word Count: 1,891
Mark: 65
Instructor’s comment:
Content/criticality: Provide general introduction to the topic, your argument and the main
points that you will cover in your introduction - don't go into detail. Good use of dividing
your content into software related issues and physical distance issues.
Relevance/accuracy: Interesting aspects covered throughout.
Citation- academic sources: Good range of sources, but you did not reach the mandatory 15.
Make sure you follow Harvard throughout and format the reference list consistently (don't
use bullet points etc).
Good use of industry examples
, Onboarding is the process of integrating new employees into the organisation,
through them gaining knowledge and learning methods, skills and behaviours from inside
the organisation in order to succeed in the organisation (Bauer & Erdogan, 2011, p.51). This
process is essential to the organisation with 64% of employees saying they will leave a job
within a year after a negative onboarding experience from a Hibob survey (Place, 2021),
negative onboarding experiences cost companies 37 billion dollars annually in the U.S. and
U.K. alone due to waste in resources and time. So, for new employees to flourish within
their new role in the organisation an effective onboarding experience is imperative. A new
challenge emerged for onboarding with the COVID-19 pandemic, staff could no longer work
in the office and were forced into working from home. This presented a fresh challenge for
many organisations as they tried to efficiently onboard new staff remotely. Original
challenges existed in onboarding i.e., Caldwell and Caldwell (2016) 10 classic onboarding
errors however remote onboarding brought about fresh challenges such as low motivation,
technical problems and the lack of social interactions which comes with remote onboarding.
In this essay we will breakdown these challenges and offer solutions to overcome them to
efficiently onboard a remote workforce.
A problem which can occur from remote onboarding is the low motivation for
completing the process. A general perception of learning online in comparison to face-to-
face is that with face-to-face there is more motivation to complete the course for example
in Batalla-Busquets and Pacheco-Bernal (2013) survey from CaixaBank 65.5% of staff found
face-to-face learning more motivational in comparison to online. A lack of direction from
remote onboarding can lead to staff losing the purpose of onboarding and leave them
unfocused. The beginning of a new job can for many bring about anxiety and pressure over
and so it is essential for the onboarding process to ease the new staff in and make them feel
comfortable in the work environment (Carlos and Muralles, 2021). Without the proper
structure prepared for the new staff this can compound the issues for them starting their
new job.
To help address the issue of motivation and refocus the staff during a remote
onboarding experience is to create structure to the day as if staff were in the office. A
structured day with start time, end time, times to allow for calls and lunch breaks needs to
1
