Practices for effective onboarding in dynamic Global Virtual Teams

Abstract

Although onboarding constitutes a crucial aspect of today’s virtual work environments, and despite the wealth of studies on Global Virtual Teams (GVTs), we know surprisingly little about onboarding practices in this context. This is due to lack of empirical studies explicitly focused on onboarding in GVTs, and an emphasis on onboarding in the pandemic context which may not be relevant in the post-pandemic everyday GVT work. In this paper, we draw on empirical data from a global organization and present practices for effectively onboarding a single member (or subgroup) half-way through the GVT lifecycle. The practices we identified address specific challenges facing GVTs. Our findings show that (a) dynamic membership makes GVT onboarding an ongoing practice (rather than a one-off activity); (b) combining traditional and GVT-specific onboarding practices can help to enhance member visibility; and that (c) onboarding in GVTs is not the sole responsibility of the organization/leader, but organization, leaders, existing and incoming members all have a role to play.