One Good Thing
This week, we checked in with UCSF Real Estate and two newly hired employees, Building Official Afsaneh Ahmadi and Operations Manager Cristina Morrison, about their experience onboarding and starting a new position remotely during shelter-in-place.
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Welcome Aboard, Virtually
Before the recent hiring freeze, Real Estate was actively recruiting to support UCSF’s growth and the 10-year capital plan. With shelter-in-place, Real Estate and other departments had to transition their in-person onboarding processes and training to a virtual experience. Darlene Yee, Director of Finance, Administration & Operations for UCSF Real Estate, redesigned the onboarding process to be more intentional and self-paced. “We don’t want to bombard them as we do in person,” she shares. "We gave them smaller chunks of information at a time, and then check-in." Darlene and new employees Afsaneh Ahmadi, who is new to UCSF, and Cristina Morrison, who transitioned to from another UCSF department, shared what worked well, what was challenging, and the real impact of Zoom Gloom.
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5 things that worked well
- Assigning an onboarding buddy.
- Creative ideas to welcome new employees virtually, like new staff welcome signs and “fun” meetings to better get to know each other.
- Delivering onboarding content in a self-paced format that allows better focus and ability to customize content based on preferred learning styles.
- Opening up more methods to connect–online drop-in meetings, chats.
- Daily huddles and regular meetings.
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5 things that were challenging
- Ensuring employees are still engaged even though they are remote.
- Missing the informal “human” connections made in person by stopping by desks or seeing coworkers around the building, and difficulty making new connections outside the immediate coworker group.
- Technical connections (shared drives, network access, new computers) can be more challenging in a remote environment.
- Lack of standardization in onboarding processes is more pronounced.
- “Zoom Gloom.”
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"Zoom Gloom" is real
The overwhelming positive of onboarding remotely is the ability to self-pace learning and focus without distraction. New employees also appreciated the extra effort to welcome them into our organization during challenging times. On the flip side, they felt drained by the impact of exclusive Zoom interactions and an unrelenting back-to-back meeting schedule, without the small breaks you might usually get walking from one meeting to the next. And new employees are not alone. According to an article from National Geographic, the unprecedented explosion of video-calling during the pandemic “has launched an unofficial social experiment, showing at a population scale what’s always been true: virtual interactions can be extremely hard on the brain.” While we won’t be sheltering-in-place forever, Zoom isn’t going away and a more remote workforce model will likely continue into the future, something to keep in mind for all of our staff, especially new employees.
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Favorite cookie jar treats: Afsaneh: dark chocolate Cristina: chocolate chip walnut cookies
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But wait...there's more!
Resources for addressing bias, hate, and discrimination
Chancellor Hawgood implored us to continue the hard work of dismantling the structural barriers in education, research, employment, and health care. He called on us to continually reinforce an inclusive culture in which every one of us feels safe and empowered. Dr. Renee Navarro, vice chancellor of Diversity and Outreach, shared resources from The Office of Diversity and Outreach for addressing bias, hate, and discrimination–see a few below: Explore resources for engaging in anti-racism work and practicing solidarity.
Resources for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) to engage in self-care.
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About One Good Thing
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See last week's One Good Thing Three Cheers for Chloe and the One Good Thing web for all stories.
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