24 Onboarding Survey Questions to Audit Your Hiring Process
According to Gallup research, only 12% workers say their company does a good job of onboarding.
The same study found that, conversely, 70% of workers who received an excellent onboarding experience are also 2.6 times as likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace and consequently more likely to stay.
Even without these stats, we all know that employee onboarding is a big deal. Kicking off employees’ journeys in the proper fashion is like the warm-up act before the main event, making sure everyone feels ready to rock the workplace.
Onboarding surveys are an effective method of assessing the effectiveness of your onboarding process.
Here's how to design an effective onboarding questionnaire and 24 example questions you can use in your own surveys.
What Is An Onboarding Survey?
Onboarding surveys, also known as new hire surveys, are administered to new starters to gather feedback about their onboarding experience. A comprehensive onboarding survey should:
- Measure the efficacy of your onboarding program
- Make new hires feel welcomed and valued
- Communicate a culture of continuous improvement
- Determine the clarity of role and company expectations
- Learn what needs to be improved from the end user's perspective.
Why Are Onboarding Surveys Important?
By asking new hires specific, standardized questions about your onboarding process, you gain insights into how your current process is working and what needs to be improved.
Here are some areas in which onboarding surveys can help you improve:
- Nailing your recruitment process. Identify where you can make improvements to your hiring process to address clarity, transparency, and the overall candidate experience.
- Understanding training effectiveness. Gauge how well employees perceive the training content, delivery methods, and overall relevance to their new roles.
- Enhancing employee engagement. Determine potential disengagement triggers and take proactive measures to address them.
- Alignment with company values and culture. Highlight the fit of your new starters to ensure a strong foundation for long-term success and satisfaction across the board.
- Employer brand. Understand and measure the influence of your brand’s first impression. This is reflected in how you attract new hires and what encourages them to join your merry band of workers.
- Work environment and wellbeing. Establish whether your organizational values and work environment align and if they promote a positive and inclusive atmosphere.
Overall, surveys are a useful tool to improve your process and, to use finance speak, maximize onboarding ROI.
Onboarding Survey Benefits
When combined with appropriate actions, onboarding surveys can help benefit organizations by:
- Boosting employee retention: Early feedback can help address issues that might lead to dissatisfaction or turnover.
- Increasing productivity: Insights gained from surveys help guide adjustments to ensure new hires are adequately prepared, speeding up the time to full productivity.
- Promote open communication: Encourages a culture of feedback where employees feel safe sharing their thoughts and concerns.
- Strengthen employer brand: A well-structured onboarding process, informed by surveys, creates a positive first impression, benefiting your reputation in the market.
On the flipside, a failure to take note of the new employee experience means that new hires are probably less engaged and prepared and more likely to leave.
How To Develop An Onboarding Survey
With the above in mind, how can you develop an effective onboarding survey(s)?
1. Predefine key milestones
It’s best practice to administer short surveys at different milestones in the onboarding process while the information is still fresh in the minds of new starters.
In general, this will be 1-2 weeks after the start date to reflect on the preboarding and orientation processes.
Post that, you might want to ask some more questions after the first 30 days focusing on training and integration and then after 90 days to get feedback on the culture and levels of engagement.
2. Create surveys for each stage
Create some surveys of roughly 5-10 questions for each of your chosen phases
- Week 1 Survey: First impressions, pre-boarding communication, and clarity of the first day/week-agenda.
- 30-Day Survey: Feedback on training, role clarity, and team integration.
- 90-Day Survey: Long-term reflections on the onboarding process, alignment with company culture, and readiness for responsibilities.
- 6-Month Survey (optional): Retrospective views on onboarding’s role in setting them up for success.
You'll also want to create separate onboarding surveys for your recently hired managers, since the manager onboarding process will differ somewhat.
Some best practices for writing survey questions:
- Recurring questions: Include some recurring questions across surveys to track changes in perception or satisfaction over time, for example, “How would you rate your onboarding experience on the scale of 1-10?”.
- Use a mix of question styles:
- Likert scale questions: Allow respondents to rate their agreement or satisfaction on a scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-7).
- Yes/no questions: Simple and quick for binary responses.
- Open-ended questions: Encourage detailed feedback and new ideas.
- Multiple choice questions: Provide predefined options to choose from for structured feedback.
- Ranking questions: Ask people to rank options in order of preference or importance.
3. Decide how to deliver surveys
The final step is to determine how you’ll administer the survey and analyze results. Many onboarding software solutions will have a survey feature, as will employee survey tools, but you could always use Typeform or similar.
Using technologies such as these will make it much easier to send the surveys and analyze the results. Some will also have handy templates for easy creation.
24 Onboarding Survey Questions
To help get you started, here are 24 examples of employee onboarding survey questions broken up into the following 7 categories:
- Recruitment and onboarding
- Training
- Engagement
- Alignment
- Employer Brand
- Work environment and wellbeing
- Remote working environment
I've included two types of questions, which can either be answered on a rating scale or in a free response.
- Rating scale questions get the employee to note the degree to which these statements reflect their agreement or opinion.
- Free-response questions ask the employee to provide their thoughts on a specific topic.
Recruitment and onboarding
Rating scale questions (1-10)
- How would you rate the clarity and transparency of the hiring process? [Rating scale]
To assess the effectiveness of the recruitment process and identify areas of improvement.
- Please rate your level of engagement and satisfaction with the onboarding process. [Rating scale]
To understand employee satisfaction levels during the onboarding period and if the job description matches the role.
- How confident do you feel in using our product or service after completing the onboarding process? [Rating scale]
To evaluate the effectiveness of onboarding new hires and equip them with the knowledge and confidence to use the product or service.
- How would you rate the overall onboarding experience? [Rating scale]
To gain an understanding of the onboarding experience as a whole.
- What additional resources or information would have helped you during the onboarding process? [Free-response]
To pick up any gaps in the current onboarding materials and gather feedback on the additional resources that would enhance participants’ understanding and proficiency.
- What improvements or changes would you suggest to enhance the onboarding experience? [Free-response]
To collect specific recommendations on how you can optimize or personalize your onboarding process.
- Is there anything else you would like to share about your onboarding experience? [Free-response]
To provide users with an opportunity to share any additional feedback, suggestions, or concerns that may not have been covered by previous questions.
Training
- On a scale of 1-10, how well does the training align with your role and responsibilities? [Rating scale]
To evaluate the relevance of your onboarding training program.
Engagement
- Since the time I joined the company, I rarely think about joining anywhere else. [Rating scale]
To find out how happy employees are—which has a direct impact on employee retention rates.
- I often receive feedback from my manager on assigned tasks. [Rating scale]
To establish if new employees receive the feedback they need to help acclimatize in your workplace and improve their skills.
Alignment
- I understand how my role supports the values and aims of the organization. [Rating scale]
To learn how new hires see their position in your organization and company culture.
- I believe my ideas are valued. [Rating scale]
To sense if employees feel like part of the team.
Employer Brand
- How did our employer brand influence your decision to join our organization? [Rating scale]
To understand the brand impact on attracting new hires and what convinced newbies to join your team.
- Has your experience with the organization so far aligned with the employer brand that was communicated during the hiring process? [Rating scale]
To assess the consistency between your perceived employer brand and the actual employee experience.
- What aspects of our employer brand stood out to you during the recruitment process? [Free-response]
To identify the specific elements that attracted them to your workplace.
- What do you think makes our organization unique as an employer? [Free-response]
To understand the key differentiators from the perspective of new employees.
Work Environment and Wellbeing
- How would you rate the work environment in terms of collaboration, inclusivity, and support? [Rating scale]
To assess the outlook of your work environment—such as inclusivity, diversity, and equality, and the level of support you provide.
- Rate how you feel our organization prioritizes employee well-being and work-life balance. [Rating scale]
To understand if your company policies, initiatives, and practices promote a clear understanding of supporting work-life balance and employee wellness.
- How does the work environment align with the employer brand that was communicated? [Rating scale]
To assess whether your organization successfully delivers on the promises and values portrayed from the first day.
Remote Working Environment
- How would you rate the effectiveness of communication tools and platforms provided for remote work? [Rating scale]
To assess the adequacy and efficiency of the communication tools available, which are crucial in a remote setting.
- How effective do you find the virtual meetings in terms of productivity and engagement? [Rating scale]
To assess the efficiency and engagement level of virtual meetings, which are a core aspect of remote work.
- How well do you feel integrated with your team in the remote working environment? [Rating scale]
To gauge the employee's sense of belonging and integration with the team, which can be challenging in a remote setup.
- What improvements, if any, would you suggest for our remote training and development programs? [Free-response]
To obtain constructive feedback on training programs and identify gaps or areas needing enhancement.
- Are there any tools or resources you feel are missing or inadequate for your role in the remote work environment? [Free-response]
To identify any gaps in the tools or resources provided, which are essential for effective remote work.
Onboarding Survey Best Practices
Follow these best practices to help you get meaningful and actionable feedback about your onboarding initiatives.
Get clear on the purpose
Being clear on what you want to achieve or improve within your onboarding process needs to be your first step. It'll help you frame the right questions and pull the information you need.
Keep them short
Your questions should be concise and focused to increase response rates and ensure you collect both relevant and actionable onboarding feedback.
A maximum of 10 questions per survey is ideal.
Utilize different question types
Incorporating rating scales allows for quantitative analysis, while open-ended questions allow respondents to express their thoughts freely and provide suggestions for improvement.
Use a mix of both to create a balanced approach that'll help you capture both detailed and structured feedback.
Pick the right time
Step into your new employee's shoes for a minute and consider when you'd have the freshest feedback for each group of questions.
For example, orientation-related questions are best answered as soon as the new employee is hired, whereas work environment questions are best saved until they've settled into their role a bit more.
Communicate the why
To increase response rates and the quality of feedback, be sure to explain to participants why you’ve created the survey and how it benefits them and the business as a whole.
You’ll find that this clarification makes it far more likely people will respond and be more engaged while they’re doing so.
Anonymity or not?
It’s your call whether you request participant names.
Doing so makes it easier to follow up, but respondents might be less candid in their responses. My advice would be to offer anonymity but also the chance to add their details for a follow-up.
Communicate Survey Findings
When you share findings and the actions you’ve taken as a result of them, you influence buy-in for any changes and demonstrate that surveys at your organization are worth completing.
Analyzing Onboarding Surveys
You’ve spent time crafting surveys and collecting data, what do you do with the results?
To effectively act on survey results, start by thoroughly analyzing the data to identify patterns, trends, and recurring issues.
If you’re using onboard or survey software, this should be relatively straightforward, but if not then compile survey responses into a spreadsheet or similar to make analysis easier.
You’ll have your question categories as outlined above, but you might also want to break down responses by demographics (e.g., team, role, tenure, in-office vs remote) to identify variations in experiences across groups.
You should also combine the results with other onboarding metrics like retention rates and time to productivity.
From here, as Liam Reese puts in his excellent article on HR data analysis, you can then use what you’ve got to “tell a story” to relevant stakeholders.
It’s likely executive management will have limited time and need to understand the longer-term impact of what the onboarding data is telling us about organizational health and progress toward key strategic goals.
Managers, on the other hand, will need less info on what needs to change at an organizational level and instead actionable insights about what they can improve in their teams.
Generating Onboarding Questions with ChatGPT
Yep, you read that right. I've been finding ChatGPT to be an excellent assistant in the ideation process for tasks like this.
Here are 3 ChatGPT prompts to gather additional questions for your onboarding surveys.
Just copy and paste the prompts that follow, one at a time, to get some fresh ideas.
Step 1: Create a Persona
I always find it helpful to tell GPT who I want it to represent before I start, so it can properly frame the context of its answers. Copy and paste the below prompt to kick things off.
Prompt 1
You're an experienced HR leader teaching me everything you know about being a great people operations manager.
You know the best practices for the position and aren't afraid to reject historical norms of how things "should be" done if they aren't overtly helpful.
Right now, you're leveraging your expertise to help me build useful employee onboarding surveys. We will be hiring these employees for [remote/hybrid/in-office] roles.
Confirm that you understand my request by telling me more about your persona.
Step 2: Give Additional Context
This step is optional but I find it helpful.
GPT can struggle with giving blanket statements and generalities. To get around this, give GPT more context on your company. This could include:
- Type of employees you're looking to attract
- Your specific state/country
- Your industry
- Role(s) you want to fill
- Growth phase of your company
- Any situational information about your company you deem important
Prompt 2
My company is in the [your industry] industry, operating out of [Country/State]. We are currently in a [linear growth/exponential growth/maintenance] phase of our business and looking for employees to fill [target role(s)] position(s).
Confirm that you understand my request by telling me what you know about my business.
Step 3: Ask for Specific Questions
Great, we've set the stage. Now for the good stuff.
I find it helpful to ask for specific questions about certain topics, one at a time, to force GPT to dive deep on each, rather than skimming the surface of all of them.
Prompt 3
Please come up with 10 specific, poignant onboarding survey questions about [topic you want survey questions about] and include the following information for each one:
- The question to include
- Whether this question should be answered using a rating scale (ie. how much do you agree on a scale of 1-5) or a free-response text box
- The purpose of the question
Assume that these questions are being asked 1 month after the employee has started working at the company.
Having GPT Troubles?
If you find you're not getting useful results, you have two options:
- Add more information about your company - such as the specific problems you're facing within your onboarding process - in Step 2 to get clear on what you want to achieve. Don't assume that it can read between the lines.
- Join our members-only Slack community to discuss your problems with other People Ops leaders who have faced the same thing. Oh, and I'll be there too!
If you combine GPT's idea generation with your organizational research, you'll have useful questions for new employees in no time.
Additional Ways to Measure and Improve Onboarding
While feedback surveys are a powerful tool for understanding employees' experiences, they are not (nor should they be) the sole method for measuring and improving the onboarding experience.
Here are additional ways to enhance onboarding new employees:
- Checking voluntary employee turnover rates: If they’re on the high side among new starters, a better onboarding process can help.
- Looking at time-to-productivity rates: Measure this KPI by working out the number of days it takes new hires to become productive, then divide this number by the total number of new employees in a time period. Short rates are great news and show that your onboarding processes are effective at getting new hires up to speed.
- Questioning if new hires are implementing their training: If they’re not completing or implementing the required new job training, it’s time to check in and review if you’ve allocated enough training time in the orientation process.
- Continuously iterate the onboarding process: Establishing a feedback loop helps review your onboarding processes regularly and address any identified issues quickly. Encourage managers and human resources teams to collaborate and share insights to make onboarding even better over time.
- Introducing structured feedback sessions: Conduct one-on-one or group feedback sessions with new employees in the first week at least. Encourage in-depth discussions and provide an opportunity to express their thoughts, concerns, and suggestions.
- Providing mentoring and buddy programs: Pairing new employees with experienced mentors or buddies helps them navigate your organization, fosters relationships, and gives them access to an unofficial support system during their first month or so.
- Implementing exit interviews: On the other end of the hiring spectrum, you have those who are leaving. Exit interviews tell you about unexpressed views or employee feedback that other team members may share.
- Use technology: Tools such as onboarding software can help with assigning tasks, tracking progress, sharing resources, and conducting surveys. You'll be able to take advantage of onboarding automation to automatically send surveys at the right moment.
You're Ready to Onboard!
If you don’t have an onboarding survey as part of your process, it’s time to create one.
You'll be able to identify:
- What's working and what needs to be improved,
- Where your new hires need more support, and
- What kind of reputation your company has with potential candidates.
So what are you waiting for? Use these best practices and sample questions, and get to work!
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