Employee Onboarding Survey Questions 2024: The HR Manager's Ultimate Guide

Onboarding is key to setting someone up for success and ensuring a positive joining experience. However, only 12% of employees believe their onboarding was done well. A poor onboarding experience can cost you a high-performing employee. If new hires do not receive enough support during their first few weeks or feel unequipped to perform, they may leave before delivering value within their first year.

Effective onboarding survey questions can help gather honest feedback from employees. A well-designed survey helps you understand where the organization excels or falls short with its onboarding programs. With these insights, you can:

• Identify gaps in the onboarding process.
• Improve your game plan.
  
• Develop a value-driven culture that fosters a sense of belonging.
• Improve the retention rates as a result.

Let’s look at some of the best onboarding survey questions that can provide you with invaluable feedback to enhance your onboarding process and make it better for the new hires. 

What is an employee onboarding survey?

An onboarding survey for employees includes questions you ask new employees to understand their experience of joining your organization. It helps you find out what’s working in your orientation and what you need to improve for onboarding new team members.

The survey usually covers things like:

• First impressions: What did they think when they first heard about your company?
• The hiring process: Was it smooth and easy to apply and interview?
• Their first weeks/months: Are they getting the needed information and support? Is the orientation effective in getting them up to speed for the role?
• How they feel overall: Are they satisfied and productive at their new jobs? Do they intend to stay?

Why do you need employee onboarding surveys?

Employee onboarding surveys are important for many reasons:
 

1. Early detection of issues before they become more serious.
2. Boost engagement and job satisfaction from day 1 and reduce turnover
   
3. Align roles, responsibilities, and expectations 
4. Measure the effectiveness of the training or support provided for new hires
5. Continuously refine and optimize the onboarding program for future hires.

Best employee onboarding survey questions

Here’s a list of the best employee onboarding survey questions divided into subsections based on specific criteria: 

Culture

• Multiple-choice question/Open-ended | Driver: Employer Brand | Milestone: 7 days: Which of the following are the top 3 factors that attracted you to join the organization? 
   
  • Innovativeness
  • Positive and supportive relationships at work
  • Attractive rewards and recognition programs
  • Growth and development opportunities
  • Application of skills
  • Focus on external stakeholders (customers and community)
  • Employment Stability
  • Culture of work-life balance
  • Others (please elaborate if selected)
    
    
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Communication | Milestone: 7 days:
  I was given sufficient and accurate information about the organization during the recruitment process. 
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Relationships at work | Milestone: 7 days: I feel welcomed in my team. 
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Candidate Experience | Milestone: 7 days: Overall, I was satisfied with the recruitment process.
• Open-ended | Driver: Candidate Experience | Milestone: 7 days: Please feel free to share anything else about your recruitment experience here. 

Work

• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Clear Expectations | Milestone: 30 days: I have a good understanding of the expectations for this role. 
  
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Enablement | Milestone: 30 days: The orientation and training provided to me was generally effective. 
  
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Alignment | Milestone: 30 days: I know how my work contributes to the organization's strategy and goals. 
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Alignment | Milestone: 60 days: My role so far matches the job description provided to me. 
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Accomplishment | Milestone: 60 days: My work gives me a sense of accomplishment. 

Overall

• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Discretionary effort | All milestones: The organization motivates me to contribute more than is normally required to complete my work. 
  
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Autonomy | Milestone: 90 days: I am empowered to make decisions to do my job effectively.
  
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Growth | Milestone: 90 days: My professional development and growth is encouraged at work.
• Scale (0=Not at all likely; 10=Extremely likely) | Driver: eNPS | Milestone: 60 or 90 days: How likely are you to recommend this organization as a place to work to friends or family? 
  
• Likert (1=Strongly Disagree; 5=Strongly Agree) | Driver: Intent to Stay | Milestone: 90 days: Even if offered a comparable role and compensation package at another company, I would choose to stay at this organization.
  

Note: We use a 5-point scale because they are efficient, and easy for respondents to understand with a midpoint allowing for a clear "neutral" response. These scales have higher response rates and quality compared to other scales. You can also customize them as per user preference.

Tips to create a better employee onboarding survey

Follow these three tips to make your new hire onboarding survey actionable and effective:

Source: LinkedIn

1. Design the milestones well based on your needs

Employee onboarding is a hectic process. Sometimes the interview process goes on for seven rounds. It includes a lot of information, paperwork, and mindwork. At this point, the last thing a new employee would want is a lengthy survey. 

Onboarding surveys typically are sent out on critical milestones such as 7, 30, 60, and 90 days after an employee officially joins the organization:

• Day 1 to Day 14: Orientation
  
• Day 14 to Day 30: Familiarization 
  
• Day 30 to Day 60: Contribution
  
• Day 60 to Day 90: Perform

It’ll help you understand the effectiveness of the whole onboarding process from the initial stage till the time an employee becomes fully productive. You can also adjust the milestones frequency according to the complexity of the role training or the orientation process to deliver the best meaningful insights without creating survey fatigue for the new hires. 

Discuss the questions with the team so that you can focus on the critical parts of the onboarding process. 

2. Mix question types

You can mix close-ended questions or open-ended questions to collect diverse data from trending insights as well as granular and in-depth qualitative feedback. 

• Close-ended questions provide employees with pre-defined answers.
• Open-ended questions invite employees for a detailed response.

If you're using a survey platform like EngageRocket, you can easily automate the onboarding surveys for new hires whenever they hit new milestones throughout the employee onboarding process. This ensures surveys are delivered efficiently and on time, with no milestones overlooked.

3. Act on feedback

It doesn’t make sense to collect the feedback if you don’t act upon it. You must take the feedback seriously to improve the overall onboarding process. Asking new employees a mix of questions will get you qualitative and quantitative data to gain good understanding of their expectations. 

Identify trends and find areas for improvement. Then, work on the feedback and communicate the changes to the new hires based on the feedback. 

Source: LinkedIn

Nail employee onboarding with EngageRocket

Employee onboarding surveys provide you with an opportunity to retain talent for the longer run. But you need to create an effective survey, get responses, and analyze the data to make the whole exercise useful. 

EngageRocket simplifies the entire process. You can easily create a survey, distribute it, and get insightful analytics to uncover any critical drivers that could lead to attrition.

Customizable templates and a science-backed library of questions help you quickly set up the survey based on your specific needs in no time.

Ready to create an engaging and effective onboarding experience for your new employees? Book a demo with EngageRocket today!

FAQs

1. What questions are asked in the onboarding surveys? 

Onboarding questionnaires help organizations understand new employees' experience and measure the effectiveness of the onboarding process. Questions included in the survey revolve around the employees' first impressions regarding an organization, its onboarding process, role clarity and expectation as well as the work environment.

2. What are the 5 C's of onboarding? 

The 5 C’s of the onboarding process include: 

• Clarity: Employees should have clarity regarding their roles and expectations.
• Compliance: Employees must know the rules and regulations.
  
• Culture: Introduce the employee to the company’s values and social norms.
• Connection: Employees should build strong connections within and outside the organization.
• Check-in: The organization must address any concerns and provide ongoing support.