Be organised so your new employee has confidence in their new organisation and can perform their best from day one.

Ask your new employee what they need

With remote working, your new employee may have to change or adjust the hours they work to meet other commitments.

If your new employee has a disability, they may need adjustments to your usual processes.

Ask your new employee what support they need for remote working. Don’t put the onus on them to tell you.

Discuss communication styles and tools

Find out how your new employee likes to communicate and balance it with your own style.

Help them get comfortable with the tools your team uses for remote working.

Ask them if they need anything in a different format, like audio recordings of meetings or accessible versions of documents.

If they’ve never used a tool your team uses, support them on how to use it properly. Send them helpful links about your tools or internal guides about your processes. Or, ask a colleague to help them.

Make forms online

Check if all the forms your new employee needs to fill out, can be filled out online.

If there are any forms that can’t be filled out online, speak with your HR team to see what you or they can do.

Your online formats must be accessible for people with disability. Speak with your communications team for advice on this.

You can email them or use cloud-based sharing tools to share files, such as OneDrive or SharePoint.

Organise their equipment, technology and software

Ask your new employee what equipment, technology and software they need to fulfil the inherent requirements of the role.

Ask your organisation if they can courier what they need to their working location.

Think about what software they’ll need to log into to do their work and anything your IT team needs to install on their devices.

Checklist for 1 month before they start

  • I’ve checked how they like to communicate
  • I’ve checked if they need information in different or accessible formats
  • I’ve sent them information about what tools we use in the team
  • I’ve asked them to let me know if they need any workplace adjustments
  • I’ve spoken with HR about completing new starter forms online
  • I’ve checked if they need any equipment and worked out how to get it to them
  • I’ve arranged for IT to install the right software on their device and set up their logins