Download This Free Onboarding Survey
In any race, a good start gives you an advantage. The same is true for retaining great talent in your organization, which is why onboarding is so important. In this talent market, even small actions that reassure your new teammates are extremely helpful. 69% of new employees are likely to stay at a company for three years or more if they had a great onboarding experience (SHRM). A smooth onboarding experience can help employees feel good about joining your organization and confident in their roles. However, if something is wrong with your onboarding process, how would you know? That’s where an onboarding survey comes in. Getting feedback from your new employees can help ensure future onboardings are operating as a key tool for retention and promoting employee engagement and company culture. To help, we’ve developed a customizable hire survey template to get you started.
Before you begin gathering feedback, you’ll want to make sure there is a system in place to collect the responses and implement necessary changes. Paper surveys are fine but an electronic option for surveying employees could be best to ensure results can be aggregated, analyzed and shared.
When’s the best time to conduct an employee onboarding survey?
Nearly 30% of new hires quit within the first 90 days (INC), which is why it may be helpful to conduct an onboarding survey after the first week to identify any issues before they discourage your new employees. You may also want to consider evaluating the process and touching base with the employee after 30, 60 and/or 90 days. If your leaders are meeting with the employee in 1-on-1s and asking these questions, you may not need as many touchpoints.
What should be in an onboarding survey?
An onboarding hire survey should include questions about culture, first-day experience and the employee’s level of confidence for completing work. New hires are in the best position to help you improve the hiring processes because they have not yet become familiar with your culture, your traditions or your acronyms. New employees can provide an outsider’s perspective to share what’s working and what’s not. Your onboarding survey should include these sample questions about the following:
- Questions about the first day experience
- Did the employee meet critical team members?
- Did the employee receive the tools they’ll need?
- Do the employees understand the facility?
- Questions about the role
- Are employees clear on how to do their job?
- Are 1-on-1s scheduled?
- Has the employee been prompted to think about his/her development plan?
- Have expectations been communicated
- Questions about the culture
- Was the employee welcomed?
- Does the employee have a mentor or onboarding buddy?
- Does the employee know who to go to with questions?
What should you do with the results?
When you get the results of your onboarding survey, be sure to address any issues your new hires report immediately so they know that their voice matters. Next, amend your process right away to make sure other new employees won’t run into the same speedbumps. If your results determine that your new hires were not engaged or felt overwhelmed, you might want to reevaluate the activities scheduled for the first day or week. You may also want to consider requesting the completion of paperwork during pre-boarding, or prior to the first day. One of the most common mistakes companies make with employee onboarding is scheduling all of the new hire paperwork to be completed on the first day. With many HCM tools, critical paperwork can be completed and filed in advance of the first day, or even quite possibly transferred from the recruiting system.
How Paycor Helps
Paycor helps promote positive onboarding experiences by automating many of the administrative tasks that often consume a new hires’ first day. If you’d like to improve your onboarding process, consider getting a demo of Paycor Onboarding. Whether you are onboarding virtually or in-person, this product is designed to save time and streamline the recruitment process. Make a great first impression by implementing Onboarding today.