Improve Onboarding With A New Hire Survey

What’s next?

So, you’ve heard the clarion call: It’s time to improve your onboarding process. Or maybe you’ve already made some changes but want to know whether or not they’re actually making a difference. What’s next?

Well, the simplest way to find out what is and isn’t working in your process is to ask recent new hires with an onboarding survey. Our HR team started doing this recently and has had great success. With a bit of planning, you can use a new-hire survey to ask thoughtful questions that will help you get crucial feedback for improving your onboarding process.
 

What are the Benefits of an Onboarding Survey?

• Better Onboarding: This one seems like a no-brainer, but we can’t overstate the importance of effective onboarding. Studies (ours included) have proven that effective onboarding is tied to increased employee connection, culture integration, performance, engagement, job satisfaction, and more. So, by improving one process, you can make huge improvements across the organization.
• Reduced Turnover: While this is likely due to multiple HR efforts and not just the onboarding survey we give new employees, BambooHR has reduced turnover by 30 percent in the past year. Getting early feedback from new employees can help you make changes that will keep them around and improve onboarding and the workplace for future new hires.
• Better Employer Brand: An onboarding survey can notify you of issues and give you time to make changes before negative reviews make it to other candidates. That’s important, because candidates trust their fellow employees three times more than employers to provide accurate information about working conditions. At the end of our onboarding survey, we ask candidates to leave a Glassdoor review so that we can 1) get more feedback and 2) tell prospective employees what it’s really like to interview and work here.
• While feedback should be sought and welcomed all over the organization, feedback about onboarding might be some of the most important. New hires are in a delicate stage of employment and ensuring that their experience is the best possible is crucial. 

How can I Distribute My New-hire Survey?

What Should I Consider when Creating My Onboarding Survey?

• Recruiting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Goals: Our recruiting team has identified the KPIs that show whether they’re effectively meeting business goals. Some of the questions in our survey help them figure out whether they’re hitting these KPIs and their goals. How’s that for strategic HR?
• Company Values: Your company’s values should give you a decent idea of what kind of experience you want your new employees to have. Use your onboarding satisfaction survey to gauge whether or not the values are being lived and instilled in new hires.
• Specific Industry and Hiring Market: It’s likely that some of the response options in our survey (like Utah-based institutions KSL and BYU Bridge) won’t mean anything to you or your new hires. That’s because they’re very specific to our hiring market. When creating your survey, make sure you think about the unique factors in your industry or area and include relevant questions that will help you navigate these spaces more effectively.
• Your new-hire survey is your opportunity to improve one of the most impactful processes in your organization: onboarding. Take the time to think through what’s important to your recruiting team, organization, and unique market. Doing so will help you create an onboarding questionnaire that’s best suited for your organization.

Author Bio

Kelsie Davis is a Brand Journalist for BambooHR. An advocate for high-impact HR professionals, Kelsie researches, analyzes and writes to encourage HR to get the most out their initiatives.  Visit www.bamboohr.com Connect Kelsie Davis Follow@bamboohr