Onboarding Remote Hires: Designing the First In-Person Week

A remote hire often gets to know the team through screens: a name in a chat, a face in a meeting, a voice on a call. The first in-person week gives people the chance to put faces to names, to see how colleagues actually make decisions, and to understand the context behind the documents they have been reading. For many companies this is the moment when the role becomes concrete.

GitLab's public handbook lists in-person onboarding cohorts among the ways its leaders can plan in-person time, alongside team onsites and company-wide gatherings. The principle is widely shared among distributed companies: in-person time is most valuable when it has a specific purpose, such as building relationships, agreeing on priorities or learning how to work together. It adds little when it simply repeats what already works well online.

Design the week around those purposes. If the goal is relationships, leave generous time for conversation and shared meals. If the goal is shared context, schedule sessions with the people who own key decisions. If the goal is practical integration, include tools, access and the team's working norms.

Timing matters as much as content. An onboarding seminar in France held too early, before accounts, equipment and access work properly, wastes the time of the newcomer and of the team. Held too late, after months of remote work, the first meeting can feel like a formality. For most roles, the first six to eight weeks is a practical window, and it lets the manager align the week with the person's own onboarding milestones.

Length is a trade-off between value and cost. Three working days of structured sessions, with arrival and departure on lighter days, covers most needs without exhausting participants. Two days can work for a small team or a narrow role, while a longer programme makes sense for a senior or cross-functional mandate. Avoid a week of back-to-back presentations; break the agenda into blocks with time to talk and to rest.

Check the calendar too. French public holidays and school holidays affect availability and transport, and a week that includes a long weekend can lose a day to travel.

There are three common formats. A central Paris hotel with a meeting floor and breakout rooms suits most onboarding weeks: it is easy to reach by rail and metro, it lets people return to their accommodation in the evening, and it keeps costs predictable. A private estate or château suits a residential format of two or more nights, where shared meals and evenings do much of the relationship-building. A flexible space, such as a loft or a converted hall, can work well for workshops and team dinners, provided it has reliable Wi-Fi and enough power for laptops.

Whatever the venue, confirm the practical details in writing: the number of rooms that can be used at the same time, the audio-visual equipment, the availability of quiet spaces and whether breakfast is included. Ask for a site visit or recent photographs of the rooms you will use, and confirm the step-free route from the entrance to each room.

Our Paris programmes for new teams combine a hotel meeting floor with an afternoon outside the venue, which keeps the week varied without moving the group too often.

Remote hires may travel from another French city, from elsewhere in Europe or from further away. For a regional hire, the TGV is often the most practical option: Lyon is about two hours from Paris, and Bordeaux about two hours by direct train. For someone flying in, confirm the arrival airport and time, and offer a transfer that tracks the flight. Plan the journey so that it does not fall on the same day as a full programme.

On the first evening, host a short welcome dinner and make sure the newcomer has a buddy who can answer practical questions. Provide a simple pack with a printed agenda, a map of the venue and the nearest metro stations, a Paris transport card if they will use public transport, and the contact details of the people they will meet.

Start the first morning at a fixed meeting point and time. The first session should explain the week, introduce the people in the room and set out what the newcomer should learn, so that everyone knows what a good week looks like.

A useful week combines four types of session. The first covers the company: its purpose, its strategy, current priorities and the reasons behind them. The second covers the role: what success looks like in the first ninety days, the key relationships and the decisions the newcomer will own. The third covers how the team works, including tools, meeting norms, written communication and asynchronous working, which is often the most useful part for someone new to a remote company. The fourth is social and does not need to be formal.

Plan one-to-one meetings with the manager and key colleagues, and keep them short. Use small-group work for real tasks, such as reviewing a live document or walking through a customer case, so that the newcomer contributes early. Leave the last session for questions and a short written feedback exercise.

Build in breaks. An agenda without pauses tends to produce exhaustion rather than learning, and it is hard to recover from in a week that already includes travel.

Accessibility should be checked at the design stage rather than on the day. In France, the Tourisme & Handicap label, managed by Atout France, assesses establishments against four categories of disability: motor, mental, visual and auditory. An establishment can hold the label for only some of these categories, so ask which ones apply to the rooms and routes you will use. For the travel and booking journey, the European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 to certain services, including websites, apps and electronic ticketing for passenger transport, which is relevant when you send the travel plan to the group.

Ask each newcomer privately, in advance, about access needs, dietary requirements and any adjustments they want. Many Paris metro stations have no lift, so plan taxis or step-free routes where people need them. Share the plan with the group beforehand, and treat the week as the start of a follow-up. A documented check-in at thirty, sixty and ninety days keeps the integration going after the travel is over.