Sandra Hohl
Junior UX Consultant
ERNI Switzerland
Preparation
One week before my official start date at ERNI, I received an email from the Assistants Management at ERNI to announce the delivery of my ERNI laptop by express messenger later that day. And not more than 60 minutes later, my doorbell rang – this is express indeed! And thanks to the perfect preparations met by the IT, I not only got all peripheral devices in the laptop bag along with the laptop itself, but I also received all needed login information by email on the same day. So the first start-up and login worked like a charm.
This early delivery gave me the possibility to already check the functionalities and configurations of my laptop so I can already prepare this part to make sure the remote meetings can take place without any technical issues.
During this whole preparation phase, I was in regular phone contact with my future People Unit Leader Thomas Blumer. He provided me with additional information on the upcoming processes and hereby greatly supported me in preparing for the different working situation I was facing.
Welcome Day
The day has come. I was up early and prepared my home office environment, got my caramel flavoured milk coffee ready and logged into the Microsoft Teams meeting. We were 3 new employees who were welcomed warmly by the Managing Director Bruno Wassmer, our People Unit Leaders, our recruiting partner – and the sun which was shining through some home office windows.
We went through the program where every referee showed the most important information on his or her slides which were immediately accessible for everyone. The whole day was orchestrated very smoothly – we barely had issues due to the fact everything took place remotely.
Reflection
Yes, remote meetings are not the same as in-person meetings, especially when it comes to introduction meetings for new employees where they usually got to know many different persons. But thanks to the modern infrastructure, we were all able to participate with video, which helped enormously to match a moving image to a name. To me, the experience was not less personal: The lack of the facets a face-to-face meeting brings has been made up by the strong common spirit and the positive human interactions in this special situation we are currently facing. And this is, in my opinion, a great result of this Welcome Day at ERNI.
Nevertheless, I am eager to taste the coffee at the Zurich office somewhen in the near future.
