How to onboard a virtual teammate

Imagine going to a job board, making a hire for a chief of staff, and onboarding that new hire within a few minutes. That’s the fantasy that artificial intelligence companies are making a reality with virtual teammates. Optimizely recently released virtual teammates to provide marketers with role-specific AI coworkers, ranging from a chief of staff to a marketing analyst. The question is no longer if virtual teammates will be joining the workforce, or even when. They’re here. The question has shifted to how these virtual teammates get onboarded and set up for success, just like a human employee on their first day. To find out, I talked with Optimizely and asked security and HR leaders what they would put in place first. Here are the best practices for onboarding a virtual teammate. Provide a clear job description Job descriptions have a reputation problem. In a Monster survey of 1,060 U.S. workers this summer, only 10% said job descriptions always reflect the reality of the role. A human hire can work around a bad job description by asking questions and watching how the team operates. A virtual teammate can’t. The input of a job description defines the outputs a virtual teammate i…