Why it works
Why does Welcomepage work when so many other remote culture rituals have failed? We think it’s because of four key elements.
Building relationships in a new social group is something we do intuitively. Evolutionary psychology has recently identified that this process is characterized by broadcasting signals of our personality, and scanning others for signals that match. This happens naturally when we’re IRL, but becomes difficult when we try to replicate that process remotely. When a room full of complex, interesting people is reduced to a list of names, titles and profile pictures, our natural ability to explore, empathize and connect with others quickly breaks down.
Welcomepage re-introduces the richness of the real world to remote and hybrid onboarding by providing new hires with a place where they can tell their story and find points of connection with others. Because Welcomepage is designed around sharing a unique personal narrative, rather than filling out a rigid questionnaire, it enables new hires to introduce themselves in a much more natural way, mirroring how we share our stories in person. In doing so, Welcomepage re-enables the natural psychological and social processes that occur in person, but in an asynchronous, remote environment.
Friction is the silent killer of even the best company rituals. A manual, multi-step process (copy-and-paste this deck, replace the dummy content with your own, then share the link with your manager, who can post it in a Slack channel…) is usually put aside for when we have time , and then never picked up again. Earnest attempts to “hack it together” using existing tools like slides or documents usually find themselves in the graveyard of abandoned ideas and unmaintained rituals.
Welcomepage combats this by introducing a zero-friction onboarding activity that new hires actually complete. It automates the process from end-to-end, from automatically sending the initial invitation to the new hire when they join, through helping the new hire build their page, all the way to sharing the new hire’s Welcomepage with the broader team when they're finished. The process of building their Welcomepage is also streamlined, with a step-by-step workflow, templates, sample content and guidelines to help the new hire along. Welcomepage is a set-it-and-forget-it ritual that actually works.
Introducing yourself in any capacity to a new team can be daunting. What’s the culture here? What’s normal and appropriate? With limited information, new hires often default to saying less, to avoid the risk of missing the mark.
To remove the stress, Welcomepage enables new hires to see how their teammates answered the same questions they are answering from within the Welcomepage Builder. They can also browse their teammates’ completed Welcomepages for examples and inspiration. The goal isn’t conformity, but rather the calm that comes from knowing you aren’t broadcasting something way out of whack with the company culture or ethos.
Today, every new hire at your company works hard to introduce themselves and tell their story. But when the next person joins, all of that context is lost and must be painstakingly rediscovered. With Welcomepage, every page is stored and easily accessible via Slack or Teams. This way, every new hire is contributing to the social graph of the company, making it easier for the next new joiner to get to know their team.
