Employee Onboarding Surveys: Get the Most Out of Your Onboarding Process

Well-organized onboarding is a great way to not only effectively train, but also retain the talent within your organization. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.” 

If you’ve been working hard on implementing your onboarding process and keeping it up to date, an employee onboarding survey can help you take your efforts to the next level. When done correctly, surveys elicit honest feedback, provide tailored insights, allow for goal and achievement tracking, and more. In this post, we’ll discuss the keys to getting the most out of your onboarding process through strategic employee onboarding surveys.

3 Key takeaways you need to know

• How an employee onboarding survey can help you refocus and refine your efforts to get the best use out of your resources
• Sample questions to consider using in your employee onboarding survey
• Best practices for employee onboarding survey implementation and how to use the insights you’ve gathered going forward

What is an Employee Onboarding Survey? 

You’ve developed a solid onboarding process that ramps up your employees to be the best they can be within your organization. How can you know for sure if the process (and all of its subprocesses) are working? 

Enter: the employee onboarding survey. Administered either during or after the onboarding process—or both—it’s a tool for gauging the success of your onboarding process in the eyes of the employees that it serves.

The way you implement your employee onboarding survey can be unique to the goals you’d like to accomplish. With Peoplelytics’ survey capabilities, for example, you can send recurring surveys to capture metrics at set intervals throughout the onboarding process.  

How Can an Employee Onboarding Survey Help you Refocus and Refine Onboarding? 

According to a recent article published in Forbes Magazine, only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their current organization does a great job of onboarding new hires. So it makes sense that investing in improving your onboarding process can help you make better use of your investments in your team members. 

Employee onboarding surveys can help you hone in on the pain points, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement within your current procedures.

Common employee onboarding pain points might include: 

• Management isn’t taking an active role in the onboarding process
• Onboarding is too conceptual, and not “hands-on” enough to empower learning
• Employees don’t feel fully engaged with their role or with the organization
• Onboarding is too short and feels more like an orientation
• Onboarding isn’t role or department specific 
• After the onboarding process, employees still don’t have answers to basic questions about where to turn for help 
• Onboarding doesn’t introduce employees to connections outside of their department
• Onboarding doesn’t relay the company’s culture or values in a tangible way
• Future opportunities for the employee aren’t made clear during onboarding

Keep in mind that onboarding surveys don’t need to be limited to the opinions of employees who have just gone through onboarding, either—they can be used to collect opinions from other stakeholders too including managers, tenured employees who may wish they had certain training or onboarding experiences they never received, leadership, and more.

Once you’ve gathered data about what isn’t working, you can refocus on what is, and refine the items or steps that need a shake-up or extra attention. 

Sample Employee Onboarding Survey Questions

Your employee onboarding survey questions will be unique to our organization, its culture, and its goals. They can even differ based on the role, department, or tenure status of the intended respondents. Here are a few great sample employee onboarding survey questions to spark ideas that will work for you: 

Agreement Scale Questions: 

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 representing “strongly agree,” and 1 being “strongly disagree,” please rank your agreement with the following statements: 

• I understand the company’s culture and values. 
• I am excited about and feel engaged with the company’s culture and values. 
• I understand what will be expected of me and what my goals will be in my new role. 
• I feel ready to start my new role. 
• I can see how success in my new role will contribute to the overall goals of the company. 
• I know where to turn for answers to questions about items such as payroll, employee benefits, technology, and parking. 
• My managers care about my success as I begin my work at the company. 
• I can see a future at the company. 

Yes or No (“Checklist”) Questions: 

• Have you met or spoken to the team members you’ll be working with?  
• Are you able to access the company’s portal for selecting employee benefits? 
• Are you able to access the company’s portal for viewing pay stubs, tax forms, and other employee financial information? 
• Did you receive a copy of the employee handbook? 
• Are you able to login to and access your company laptop, email, and/or remote access platform? 
• Do you understand how to access virtual meetings? 
• Are you able to use your company phone? 
• Is your office or workstation suitable for you to begin work? 
• Did you receive and complete employee safety training? 

Open-ended Questions: 

• Holistically, how do you feel about your onboarding experience?
• What was the most helpful part of your onboarding experience? 
• What would you improve upon or change about your onboarding process? 
• What is your overall impression of the company after completing your onboarding process?
• What are you most excited about accomplishing during your new role? 
• Do you have any questions about the company’s policies or procedures? 
• Do you have any questions for leadership, your managers, or HR? 

Best Practices for Employee Onboarding Surveys

Knowing exactly what to measure (and how to measure it) within your employee onboarding survey can be tricky, but great software helps make the process both intuitive and productive. Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you’re setting up your employee onboarding survey:

• Don’t be afraid to dive deep into specific topics. Drilling down on an important topic can offer a more comprehensive insight into an employee’s thought processes. Topics like engagement with company culture or understanding of an employee’s role and expectations are great topics to deep-dive on. 
• Utilize survey software that’s designed to be user-friendly: You can mandate or require completion of your employee onboarding survey, but the best insights come from truly enthusiastic and engaged respondents. Keep your employees engaged and avoid survey fatigue by administering your surveys using software that’s designed to be user-friendly, interactive, and exciting to use. 
• Make it clear that you’re keeping employee answers confidential. Employees may be more likely to provide honest answers to tough questions if they know their responses won’t make their way back to their managers, fellow employees, or leadership. Emphasize that responses to employee onboarding surveys are confidential and will only be used to improve the onboarding process or to provide tailored assistance to the respondent. 

How to Use the Insights you’ve Gathered from your Employee Onboarding Survey

• Understand your strengths and weaknesses. An effective employee onboarding survey can gather deep insights from simple ratings, putting together an accurate picture of your organization’s onboarding strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve identified what you do well, you can lean into those processes; and once you know what you can improve on, you can begin to reformulate new strategies for meeting those goals. 
• Put together patterns and unlock themes. Through data, a group consensus starts to become clear. By measuring employees’ opinions and outcomes related to onboarding, you can unlock patterns, including answers to questions like: What do successful employees have in common during the onboarding process? Which onboarding metrics correlate with long-term retention? What can we do to help employees hit the ground running? 
• Use survey software that takes the guesswork out of your data. If your survey software isn’t making your onboarding process easier, it’s time to explore other options. Peoplelytics’ survey tools share detailed breakdowns of your data with you, so you don’t have to export data and try to sort through it yourself. Our software even makes recommendations for your next steps. With the right survey software, you can take your insights to the next level. 

Let’s Recap

In conclusion, the significance of a well-structured onboarding process cannot be overstated. Not only does it facilitate effective training, but it also plays a pivotal role in retaining talent within an organization. A robust onboarding program increases the likelihood of employees staying with a company for an extended period.

Moreover, leveraging employee onboarding surveys can elevate these efforts to new heights. By incorporating strategic surveys into the onboarding process, organizations can refine their strategies, solicit honest feedback, and track progress effectively. This approach enables companies to optimize resource utilization and tailor their onboarding experiences to meet the unique needs of their employees.

By incorporating these takeaways into their onboarding strategies, organizations can create an environment conducive to employee growth, engagement, and long-term success. Ready to get started? Check out Peoplelytics free demo to see how you can use onboarding surveys in your company.