The impact of the adoption of remote working practices on onboarding of new hires in product development industry during the outbreak of Covid-19 world pandemic

The following thesis aims to study the impact of the adoption of remote working practices in the integration of new hires into an organization through the onboarding process in product development industries. The first chapter reviews the most relevant literature related to product development activities and the main drivers of the diffusion of remote working in order to introduce the context in which this research takes place and the importance of studying remote working. The second chapter outlines the main work implications of remote practices extracted from the literature and the most relevant variables in the onboarding process of the new hire. In this way, it was possible to extract the variables to be studied in the onboarding process and the potential impacts of adopting remote work practices on this process. The research was subsequently conducted through the administration of a questionnaire to workers in product development industry who were hired during the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The questionnaire was developed to analyze the challenges encountered by new hires during the onboarding process and the impact these had on job satisfaction and perceived productivity. Finally, in the third chapter we expose and analyze the data collected from the questionnaire responses going to study the differential of challenges encountered by new hires onboarded remotely and those onboarded in presence and how these impacted overall job satisfaction and perceived productivity.