Starting a new job anywhere is daunting. You don’t know what the other team members are like. You don’t know the refrigerator policy. And you probably don’t know how to pronounce at least one of your coworker’s names correctly.

Luckily, sharing an office forces you to interact with your new colleagues and form some sort of relationship. Nobody wants to sit through hours of awkward silence. When you physically occupy the same space, it’s only natural to chat up the people you’re working next to.

But what about when you’re joining a remote team?

This is where things get tricky. As a remote team, the only space you can occupy together is a Slack channel.

It’s really hard to start new relationships because you can’t just turn to someone on the way to lunch or lean over their shoulder while they’re working.

Building new relationships when you’re remote requires initiative from each and every member of the team. You actually need to go out of your way to hop on extra video chats and stay active on Slack if you want to get to know the people you work with.

How you onboard sets the tone for every moment going forward.

Be welcoming, warm, and thorough from the get-go. Teammates should feel like actual people, not just additional usernames on a screen.

Warm up your existing team members to new hires — they’re the most qualified to accurately depict your company’s working culture and create a more immersive onboarding experience.

Always encourage teammates to communicate with each other instead of constantly going through you —if you’ve been there from the beginning, this can prove surprisingly difficult for new hires.

Having your team onboard together makes it significantly easier to collaborate in the future without requiring you to micromanage every project.

Here’s how we like to onboard new team members.

We start by going over an extensive onboarding guide with each and every employee. Our guide is stuffed with anything they need to know, and anything they may want to know in the future.

It goes over the common pitfalls of remote work and how we can avoid them together.

We cover insurance info, benefits, and how to stay on top of your psychological health. We also go over how to remedy common problems other team members have experienced, as well as how to schedule vacations/travel time.

Kickstart new relationships with easy icebreakers.

Avoid becoming the only contact point for new employees by assigning other team members to make sure they feel welcomed.

We always schedule individual chats with every member of the team for new hires. It makes it a lot easier to get to know each other and feel comfortable early on.

Be super explicit about the way you work.

Nothing ruins a new job faster than a bad relationship with your managers.

And on the flip side, nothing is more frustrating than leading a team that you can’t manage successfully.

For that reason, hiring and onboarding are two things that you really just want to get right the first time. Taking extra time to start off on the same page is a lot better than stopping for unexpected roadblocks a few weeks in.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good someone is at their job if they don’t work well with you and your team.

It’s almost impossible to pick up cues over conference calls and Slack messages. When you’re remote, things that aren’t said aren’t noticed. It’s easy to avoid future frustration by being clear about all of your working policies and expectations from the beginning.