To hire and work during a global pandemic : A qualitative study of distributed onboarding processes

To integrate new employees into organizational norms, expectations and work-related procedures, organizations use onboarding with varied results. In 2020, Covid-19 forced organizations to have their employees working from home, if possible, to reduce the spread of the virus. Many organizations were caught off guard by this, as processes and routines, including onboarding processes, suddenly had to be performed in a distributed way through virtual means, which to many led to unforeseen consequences. The purpose of this study was to examine how new employees were affected by going through a distributed onboarding process, as well as how their continued distributed working circumstances changed. The purpose was also to contribute points of improvement for the studied organization, grounded in the study’s results combined with prior research on the topic of onboarding. Nine interviews were conducted with employees hired in the span of 2020-2022 in the Nordic part of a global organization where 250 employees work distributed in offices spread across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The results show varying challenges in relation to the participants’ experiences of distributed onboarding processes, where feedback, information sharing and gathering, relational aspects, communication, insiders, organizational culture, and role clarity were all affected in part by the distributed conditions, as were individual factors. The study contributes insights around the subject of distributed onboarding for the organization, but also gives a direction for further research to reach a deeper understanding of how organizations and individuals are affected by distributed conditions