Onboarding a new employee benefits both them and the company. Implementing a robust onboarding procedure not only makes new hires feel welcome, but it creates an important bond of trust that affects retention rates. Consider evaluating ways to improve your company’s onboarding process.
What Is Onboarding?
Onboarding is the step that follows job acceptance: it’s a process that introduces a new hire to the people, procedures, and responsibilities of the company and their position. Effective onboarding is structured, provides clear instructions and guidance, and connects the employee with someone they feel comfortable asking questions.
Why Is Onboarding Important?
The hiring process is an investment in the future of your company. It takes valuable employee time and budget to find the right fit for open positions. The energy you devote to hiring should carry over into onboarding, ensuring your new hires’ first impressions are positive. Surveys of new hires reveal some startling statistics about their first days at a new job:
86 percent make decisions about their future in the first six months of a new job.
Onboarding helps employees build relationships and find job satisfaction sooner.
80 percent said a good onboarding process would make them stay at a new job.
93 percent said some onboarding before day one made the process go smoothly.
Rather than waiting for the first day of work, have new hires fill out forms and provide company information beforehand. This can help lessen the feeling of an information dump on day one.
84 percent found communication before and after day one beneficial.
In addition to preboarding, follow up after the first day to address any concerns right away.
On average, employees said it took six to seven months to feel comfortable in a new job.
Onboarding can ease the transition, ensuring new employees want to stay well beyond their onboarding period. They are more likely to feel happy at work, which leads to greater productivity and collaboration.
In addition to supporting important job satisfaction and retention goals, effective, well-organized onboarding ensures legal compliance by collecting the documentation required to meet federal and local labor laws.
Before day one, you could set up new employees with access to the company portal. This is where ApplicantStack can ease the workflow. Candidates are easily transitioned to hires, who are assigned a series of tasks to complete. You can collect tax documents, give access to benefits information, and set up contracts for e-signatures. ApplicantStack can send reminders to ensure all tasks are completed on time. This early access gives employees a chance to review the paperwork at their convenience, under reduced pressure.
Day one welcome
For an in-person employee, the first day of work should include logistics such as showing them their workspace, providing the necessary computer or phone, and giving them a tour of the office. Some businesses provide company swag to help new hires feel welcome and part of the culture. You can ship tech and swag to remote employees if they’re not close enough to come into the office to pick it up.
Other materials might include a welcome packet with information on dress code, expected work schedule, timekeeping, and other aspects of company culture to help a new hire feel comfortable right away. Provide any entry codes or badges with a thorough explanation of security procedures.
Orientation and shadowing
To drill down into job responsibilities and tasks, set up a meeting with supervisors, other team members, and an assigned buddy to help them through the first few days of work. Shadowing can be an effective way to show collaborative tasks, require use of equipment, or involve interaction with customers or clients. It can show the nuances of how your company works, even if the person has held similar jobs before. Ensure that the person assigned to be the point of contact is open and available to answer questions, so the new hire doesn’t hesitate.
Demonstrate patience with new people. “Overall goals for the first week should include role definition, goal setting, explaining performance indicators and beginning assimilation into your company culture,” says Forbes’ Liz Masoner. Expect technology and policy glitches and reassure the new hire that it’s all part of the introductory process.
Ongoing support
Referring back to that “comfort at six to seven months” statistic, recognize that new hires need more than just a week-long introduction. New things will crop up that they didn’t know to ask about, and they need to feel that others are available and open to helping, even months into their employment. Consider offering weekly check-ins, open-door policies, mental health support, or find ways to recognize and acknowledge the work they have been contributing in their short time at the company.
Developing an organized, thoughtful, and welcoming onboarding program can help you avoid churn as you hire new employees. The more new hires feel educated and guided as they start their new roles within your company, the more they will feel like a valued part of your business and contribute the skills and talents that helped them stand out in the hiring process.
For small businesses with multiple locations, it’s important to establish consistent hiring practices, not only for compliance but also to preserve your brand identity. Building a consistent hiring program may present some challenges across locations. Read on for some ideas to help you find good quality hires for your entire business.
Challenges of Hiring Across Locations
Managing multi-location hiring comes with its own share of challenges.
Centralized vs. Local
Your company will have to decide whether to use a centralized hiring department or have each location hire its own staff.
Consistency
Without a central hiring department, you may struggle to maintain consistency in policies and practices between locations. Each manager may want to hire in their own way.
Compliance
Particularly when locations are in different states or even countries, it can be challenging to ensure your company adheres to local labor laws regarding minimum wage, overtime, or mandatory breaks.
Company Culture
Hiring practices that vary slightly can affect how your employees experience company culture and how prospective candidates see your company, influencing their desire to work there.
Best Practices for Consistent and Compliant Hiring
To overcome the challenges inherent in hiring across multiple locations, it’s important to implement best practices that promote consistency and compliance. Consider some of the following tips:
Develop a Hiring Strategy
HR consulting firm CPR suggests a 5-part approach to developing your recruiting strategy:
Assess workforce needs
Define clear goals
Outline key components
Align with culture and values
Measure and adjust
Within each of these steps, you may need to address location-specific concerns. Examples include local labor laws or variable shift patterns. With a strong foundational approach, your team can implement a hiring strategy that attracts talented workers.
Focus on Job Descriptions
A potential hire’s first impression of a job and your company comes from the job description. If companies often use vague, cliché-filled job descriptions that don’t properly represent the responsibilities, the relationship can sour quickly. Job seekers need accurate language with specifics like expected duties, shift hours, and compensation. Avoid mimicking other companies’ language; use your own voice to accurately represent the job and your culture.
Choose a Compliance Expert
For multi-location businesses, especially those across state or country lines, designating a compliance expert is vital. State labor laws differ from one another in a variety of ways. You must ensure your workers are in compliance to avoid costly fines or lawsuits. A compliance expert on your team will keep track of each location’s labor laws and follow up with managers to ensure each location is in strict compliance.
Compose Fair Interview Questions
A series of structured interview questions ensures that the company is well-represented in each location and that each applicant is treated fairly. Initial phone or video call screenings may be under the purview of the central hiring team, while in-person interviews may be better suited with managers at each location. Sometimes, role-playing or problem-solving during an interview can be as revealing as more standard questions.
Use an Applicant Tracking System
ApplicantStack is a valuable asset on a variety of hiring fronts. You can easily keep track of applicants by location, record each stage of the hiring process, communicate with prospective candidates within the app, and create reports that reveal the metrics your hiring team cares about. Learn which locations are receiving the most candidates, and their recruitment source, so you can readjust your budget to give attention where you most need it. Understand the valuable time-to-fill metric to determine whether your hiring team is spread too thin and needs more attention. An ATS provides real metrics that can translate into actionable changes.
Design Custom Onboarding
While many of your company’s onboarding materials will be similar across locations, some specific characteristics may apply only to individual locations. For example, you may need to address the makeup of the customer base, adjusted hours, local customs, differences in labor law compliance, or differences in workflow. Your management on the ground at each location should contribute their insights to the onboarding programs to ensure that all relevant information for the business and the location is included in onboarding new employees.
Gallup polls consistently find that most new employees find their companies’ onboarding lacking.
“Companies should make sure new hires feel welcomed and immediately appreciated, quickly developing a sense of purpose and belonging.”
Consistency and compliance are the goals for hiring across multiple locations. A centralized hiring team can outline clear job descriptions, create a strong team to monitor compliance, and use software to keep hiring goals on target.
The process of recruiting, interviewing and hiring a new employee often requires a lot of effort. But the work for human resources (HR), as well as for team or department leaders, doesn’t stop there. The organization then needs to onboard that new hire. Employee onboarding involves familiarizing new employees with the organization, teaching them about internal processes and giving them the tools they need to become productive team members. The right employee onboarding software makes the process easier.
What Is Employee Onboarding Software?
Employee onboarding software is any solution with the specific purpose of making onboarding new hires easier and more efficient. Successful employers know the value of onboarding: A smooth onboarding process helps new staff become more productive quicker. This can have positive effects on the long-term value an employee brings to an organization.
Key Features of Employee Onboarding Software
Here are some of the most important facets of an effective employee onboarding solution:
Automated workflow: Onboarding can require a lot of communication. A new hire can be stuck in limbo for a while, waiting for somebody in HR to give them clearance to access an internal system, for example. But by automating workflows, a good employee onboarding software solution can instantly send documents and task requests to the appropriate staff to speed up the process.
Data security: A key part of compliance is security. An effective modern employee onboarding solution must have advanced data security and privacy protections.
Integrability: Onboarding software can’t speed anything up if it introduces friction with the other systems and applications your workplace uses. An effective solution must provide seamless integrations for assessments, background checks, virtual interviews and more.
Core Benefits of Employee Onboarding Software
Some benefits of effective an employee onboarding solution include:
Centralized information: Nothing eats up time like searching for documents and information. With a centralized portal to host all new hire paperwork and employee information, nobody has to wonder where certain documents are.
Easy document sharing: A centralized hub for employee information and training material, such as an employee handbook, makes sharing these documents a lot easier. This can also help achieve paperless onboarding, which is crucial for many organizations, especially those with remote employees.
Efficiency boosts: The stated aim of any effective onboarding tool is to make the whole process more efficient. This makes it easier for the HR manager, for payroll and for the new hire. This can have long-term benefits, because the first few months are critical for new staff deciding if they want to stay with their new company. A more efficient onboarding process can mean higher employee satisfaction, a more positive company culture and greater employee retention.
Quicker ramping processes: The faster administrative tasks and payroll forms are out of the way, the sooner a company can get a new hire up to speed. A quick onboarding journey means staff are working at full capacity sooner.
Here are six of the best employee onboarding software options:
1. ApplicantStack
Of course we were going to include our own software on this list. It is our list, after all, and ApplicantStack just happens to start with an “a” so we’re number one.
ApplicantStack offers all the benefits discussed above. You can easily import new hires from our applicant tracking system and upload all the necessary forms (W-4, I-9, etc.). And you can find all this information in your centralized, customized and branded New Hire Portal. You can also set reminders and use templates to automate workflows and speed up tasks.
2. BambooHR
BambooHR offers tools to speed up onboarding paperwork, such as electronic signatures, with customizable pre-boarding packages.
3. Click Boarding
Click Boarding offers a mobile-first, international and configurable solution. This software has compliance and security features and can reduce no-shows during the hiring process.
4. Efficient Hire
A subsidiary of Equifax, Efficient Hire focuses on streamlining the hiring process. This system’s specialty is onboarding hourly employees.
5. HR Cloud
HR Cloud offers an organized, detailed approach to onboarding. With this software, you can create a comprehensive onboarding workflow to keep everyone on the same page.
6. Rippling
Rippling provides an all-in-one system for HR, IT and payroll. This software reduces the effort needed to manage the employee lifecycle, from hiring and onboarding to benefits administration.
ApplicantStack Has Every Onboarding Feature You Need
ApplicantStack can provide all the benefits mentioned in this article. Our powerful employee onboarding software allows you and your HR team to improve efficiency and save time — and get new hires working for you.
If you’ve read all the way to the end of this article, then you’re clearly interested in leveling up your employee onboarding process. And you evidently trust us enough to read an entire article, so why not try our employee onboarding system risk-free with a free trial and see how you like it?
Employee onboarding isn’t just an HR task; it’s a critical investment an organization makes in its future quality and performance. Many companies underestimate the power of a structured new hire strategy. This is unfortunate because the consequences of an inefficient or disjointed new hire orientation can directly hit productivity and profitability.
The Importance of New Hire Orientation
Ask an employer or executive if onboarding and orientation are important, and they’ll probably say, “Yes.” However, actions don’t always follow these words. In fact, 36% of employers don’t have a structured onboarding process at all. And if you ask employees, you’ll find that just 12% of them say their organization has a good onboarding process. This can be a real issue, because the absence of a clear framework can have myriad negative effects, such as:
Decreased productivity.
Greater operational inefficiencies.
Poor employee retention.
Lower team morale and engagement.
Missed revenue targets.
This confirms a simple truth: to minimize risk and maximize results, you must ensure your new employees feel supported, confident and engaged from day one. Implementing a strong new hire orientation plan is the essential first step.
Orientation vs. Onboarding: Why the First Day Matters
Both onboarding and orientation can be critical to the future success of a new employee, but they’re not synonyms. It’s important to distinguish between the two.
Onboarding is the full, ongoing process — often lasting 30 to 90 days — of integrating a new employee into a company, its culture and their new role.
Orientation is a crucial component of onboarding, typically a one-time event on the first day. It’s an organization’s opportunity to make a powerful first impression on new personnel, providing them with a high-level overview of the hierarchy, key stakeholders and immediate expectations.
What Makes a Successful Orientation?
Every organization will have aspects of its orientation that are unique to it. However, broadly speaking, a successful first-day orientation should achieve four core goals:
Instill confidence and comfort: Starting a new job can be stressful. Your orientation should put new hires at ease, making them feel comfortable and valued, which is the foundation for future loyalty.
Boost engagement and speed-to-competency: By providing quick access to key information, necessary tools and introductions, you speed up new hires’ learning curve. Engaged employees become confident, productive contributors faster.
Clearly define expectations: Regardless of prior experience, new staff need clarity on your way of doing business. Tailoring the orientation to the specific role ensures they understand their responsibilities and possess the immediate resources to perform well.
Reduce costly employee turnover: Employees who feel prepared, confident and valued from their first day are significantly more likely to commit to their roles for the long term. This directly protects your recruiting investment.
Essential Content for Your New Hire Orientation
The exact style of your orientation will depend on your company size and industry, but by keeping the following core elements in mind, you can increase your new hire’s chances of achieving early — and long-term — success:
Culture, Mission and Values
This is the “why” behind your company. New hires need to know your core values to understand business goals and align their work ethic accordingly. Sharing your specific mission ensures everyone is working toward the same standard of customer service and operational excellence.
Management Structure and Introductions
A walkthrough of your organizational chart is imperative. Introduce new employees to the executive leaders and relevant managers within the company. If possible, incorporate prominent executives — even for just a 10-minute video call or personalized welcome video — to share key insights and make the new hire feel connected to leadership.
Role-Specific Information
New hires often require immediate, practical tools. This includes departmental contact information, instructions on how to access necessary systems and where key resources or files are stored. This eliminates any “Where do I start?” frustration.
Policies, Procedures and Compensation
Cover the non-negotiables early on. Essential policies to review include:
Safety and security procedures.
Paid time off policies.
Equal employment opportunity guidelines.
Other relevant company policies outlined in the employee handbook.
Ensure every new hire receives a digital or paper copy of the employee handbook and signs an acknowledgment stating they have received and reviewed it. Also, clearly outline their compensation and any benefits packages, such as healthcare or retirement plans, supplied equipment or wellness support.
Best Practices for Maximizing Orientation Success
Successful onboarding often begins with a hiring process centered on the candidate experience and extends to a careful and deliberate orientation. To ensure your new hire satisfaction remains high, follow these best practices for implementation:
1. Strategize Your Timing
Schedule your orientation sessions during your company’s quieter periods. For example, if Mondays and Fridays are typically busy, set the orientation for early on a Tuesday or Wednesday. This informed scheduling minimizes distractions, allowing both new hires and managers to focus fully on the session.
2. Share a Clear Agenda in Advance
Eliminate first-day anxiety by providing a clearly formatted agenda ahead of time. Email incoming staff a timetable that breaks down the first day and week. A structured plan ensures the initial stage goes smoothly and helps new hires arrive feeling prepared. Include a thoughtful welcome message to set a positive tone.
3. Encourage Hands-On Interaction
Ditch the passive, all-day lectures. Your goal is engagement. Incorporate a mix of participation-based activities to make the orientation fun and memorable, such as:
Quick group quizzes on policies.
Team-based games related to company history.
Open Q&A sessions with senior team members.
4. Schedule Dedicated One-on-One Time
Even if orientation involves a group, individual meetings are beneficial. Set aside time for the direct manager to meet with new hires face-to-face. This personalized welcome helps managers connect on a personal level and provides a private space for the new hire to ask questions and share any concerns.
5. Leverage Software To Streamline the Process
The biggest drain on a hiring manager’s time during orientation is manual paperwork and coordinating across departments. This is where technology saves you time and reduces risk.
Onboarding software offers an all-encompassing solution that simplifies, streamlines and enhances the entire process. It eliminates the hassle of paper forms, keeps records digitally organized and ensures all teams (HR, IT, managers, etc.) are in the loop.
The ApplicantStack Advantage: Seamless Onboarding
Good onboarding tools are invaluable to your small business. ApplicantStack is a powerful applicant tracking system and hiring platform with robust onboarding features built right in.
Our comprehensive solution allows you to:
Import new hires seamlessly: Data flows automatically from the initial application right into the onboarding phase, eliminating manual data entry errors.
Build bespoke checklists: Create and manage unique, paperless onboarding checklists for each job position or work location, ensuring compliance and consistency every time.
Simplify documentation: Use templates and digital signature capabilities to automate form submission and record keeping.
Take your onboarding efficiency to new heights and reduce the administrative burden on your team.
Onboarding is the process of hiring and integrating a new employee into an organization and ramping them up to speed. Onboarding includes providing the information, tools and resources new hires need to be successful in their roles. An effective onboarding process might involve an orientation to help new team members feel welcome, going over the appropriate human resources (HR) information, discussing company culture, training sessions and building relationships with colleagues, improving long-term retention and productivity. Employee onboarding is critical to successful recruiting efforts and strong employee retention rates. But one question often comes up: How long should onboarding last? We answer that question, as well as cover the benefits of more intensive onboarding, below.
How Long Should Onboarding Take?
The answer: It depends.
But of course, you probably knew that already. Not every business is the same, and industries can vary a lot from one to the next. As a result, onboarding durations vary by role and sector. Gallup has found that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, given that a relatively small minority of organizations have an onboarding process that lasts six months or longer.
This suggests that businesses might be able to achieve more effective onboarding by offering a longer, more measured learning process. But that doesn’t mean all companies must design a long onboarding phase. To get a better idea of what length of onboarding program might benefit your organization and work environment, it might be helpful to look at onboarding length as three different categories.
Phases of the Onboarding Process
Short-term (1-30 days) for basic orientation.
Standard (1-3 months) for role and cultural integration.
Extended (3-12 months) for roles requiring extensive training or complex environments. A longer, comprehensive onboarding process, often extending up to a year, might be more effective, increasing productivity, retention and job satisfaction. This enables new hires to get comfortable and fully integrate into the company culture.
It’s vital to understand that onboarding is more than just a day-one thing. No new hire is going to feel comfortable in their role after a single day of information. In fact, the opposite may be true — trying to cram all the information about a company and professional role into an eight-hour shift could leave someone feeling overwhelmed and confused.
Bringing someone new on board should be a longer process that involves various people throughout the organization. Explore the reasoning behind extended onboarding, along with the benefits of investing in this type of program.
Factors That Influence Onboarding Length
Here are some factors that can affect how long onboarding takes:
The job role: Some jobs are very complicated, while others are relatively simple. A successful onboarding process is tailored to the job in question. It doesn’t make sense to cram a month of onboarding material into one week if the work requires a lot of training.
How complex the organization is: Sometimes it’s not the new role that intimidates a new employee as much as it is the company itself. Every organization has its own internal policies, tools and methods that can take a while to learn.
How much guidance is required: It might be appropriate to let a new employee learn independently, adapting to the company on their own onboarding timeline. However, for other positions, extensive training sessions are necessary, making for a longer onboarding program.
Employee engagement: One new hire might tear through the new work materials and paperwork quickly, enthusiastically wanting to start their new job in earnest. Another might be shy, nervous or otherwise require more training.
What tools you use: The right tools, such as a best-in-class applicant tracking system, can help create a successful onboarding program.
Investing in a More Comprehensive Onboarding Process
Ultimately, the right length of time spent onboarding a new hire depends on your company, industryand the individual role. But experts recommend creating a more comprehensive process that allows someone to ease into their job, rather than feeling like they’re drinking from a fire hose. Extending the onboarding experience allows those involved to transition the overall process into a chance for continuous learning and development.
Benefits of an Extended Onboarding
By taking time to adjust your company’s onboarding practices and extending the process, you can create a more positive experience for every new hire. The benefits of these efforts are extensive.
Improves Knowledge Retention
Can you think back to your first day at your current job? You probably experienced a feeling of being overwhelmed, along with some confusion — especially when learning more about your expected duties and responsibilities, company policies and proceduresand even the lay of the land (if you work in-office).
Starting a new job tends to be an experience of knowledge overload. But according to research performed by Goins & Fisher, a new hire retains approximately 10 percent of what they learn during the onboarding process, 30 days into their role. By contrast, nearly three-quarters of new employees have knowledge gained by performing essential duties of their jobs. Hands-on training is a much better teacher than a person talking at you for hours on end. Consider how your onboarding process can introduce ideas, then put them into practice ASAP.
Establishes a Supportive, Learning-Based Culture
A longer onboarding period can also play a role in your organizational culture, establishing the importance of continuous learning. When employees can learn more things over time, they tend to have stronger skills and improved retention of their knowledge. As a result, your organization can drive growth and innovation by providing opportunities to learn and develop.
Drives Business Success
The bottom line is that you want your business to succeed, and employees play a significant role in making that happen. Return on investment is generally one of the most important metrics to consider, including when recruiting and bringing on new hires.
Employees who feel comfortable in their roles and understand what is expected of them tend to get up and running faster, which translates to improved productivity and engagement. These characteristics can influence overall business success, making it worthwhile to invest in supportive onboarding processes.
So how long should onboarding take? We recommend spreading it out over at least three months for lower-level roles and up to a year for higher-level positions. Provide opportunities to meet with others in the company to get a sense of how an employee fits into the strategy and future goals. By taking these steps and extending the process, you can reap the benefits of employees who feel positive about their futures and ready to step up in their roles.
FAQs About Onboarding Length
Here are some frequently asked questions about the onboarding process:
How Do You Balance Onboarding Timelines With Time-to-Productivity
It’s not fair to judge the performance of new staff against the performance of more experienced team members. We understand that even a new hire with all the right technical skills won’t be fully productive during the first week, month or maybe even six months.
But arbitrarily ending the official employee onboarding phase at one month won’t automatically make new hires fully productive by their fifth week. Judging and documenting how long it takes employees to get up to speed is the best way to establish accurate and achievable time-to-productivity expectations.
What’s the Difference Between Onboarding and Orientation?
Orientation is a short-term, initial process that can be part of a larger onboarding program. Orientation provides new hires with basic information and paperwork, along with meeting other staff, while onboarding covers longer-term plans to integrate employees into the company culture.
How Does Onboarding Duration Affect Employee Retention?
A comprehensive onboarding process is likely to increase job satisfaction and, therefore, employee retention. Many employees who leave their jobs choose to do so in their first few months, so taking the time to acclimate them to their new positions can have positive effects.
How Long Does Onboarding Take for Remote Employees?
Much like the traditional process, remote onboarding can take anywhere from a few weeks to over six months, depending on a job’s complexity. It might be a little quicker than in-office positions because new hires don’t have to learn where various rooms and office materials are. However, there may also be remote tools and platforms that require extra learning time.
Ready To Step Up Your Organization’s Onboarding?
A big part of an effective onboarding process is having the right tools. ApplicantStack is an applicant tracking system that not only helps organizations attract, interview and hire new talent, but also onboard them efficiently with built-in collaboration tools and data security.
ApplicantStack can help your business ramp up new staff faster and more effectively. Schedule a demo today to see how it works.
It takes some skill to maintain the welcoming energy of hiring into the first day of work. Effective onboarding may be markedly improved by administering a new hire onboarding survey not long after bringing someone on the team. Learning how new hires perceive your company’s onboarding process can provide valuable insight that you can translate into improvements.
What Is the Purpose of a New Hire Onboarding Survey?
The new hire onboarding experience can be overwhelming. Company policies, benefits, and job responsibilities are all vital information but can be difficult for people to process all at once. That’s where the onboarding survey comes in. A thoughtful survey gives new employees the chance to think over their experiences within the first few weeks of the job, and provides companies valuable feedback in areas such as:
Retention: Gallup found that “only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. This failure gets in the way of the formation of an emotional bond between the new hire and the company — a connection that can make or break retention.” It’s costly in both money and time to hire. Onboarding surveys can help companies make corrections in hiring and onboarding processes to increase retention numbers.
Faster Integration: A Bamboo HR survey found that “87% of employees who rate their onboarding experience positively say they also feel very clear about what their job entails.” That statistic shows the tremendous power of a good onboarding experience. The way to find out what’s working and what can be improved in your system is by asking those who have just gone through it.
A Welcoming Company Culture: Onboarding with empathy means you see a new hire as a whole person in a fresh professional chapter, excited or anxious about new challenges and successes to come. Seeking thoughtful feedback shows new employees that their opinions are valuable and that you want their transition to be as smooth as possible.
Job Satisfaction: Some feedback is more appropriate after a length of time, like at a one-year anniversary. Newer employees can reflect on their onboarding experience with the benefit of hindsight. They may be able to pinpoint parts of the process that turned out to be more or less helpful and contribute to future improvements.
Fosters Brand Loyalty: First impressions can turn a new hire into an advocate or a detractor. When they feel included, are provided resources, and are invited to offer feedback, they can recommend your company as a good place to work.
Sample New Hire Onboarding Survey Questions
Questions may be structured as Yes/No with a chance for explanation, statements with a ranking scale, or open-ended.
Yes or No Questions with Possibility for Explanation:
Were you given all the tools (laptop, desk, etc.) necessary to perform your job? If not, can you describe what was missing?
Were you given timely access to company software, subscriptions, logins, etc? Are you missing any access you expected to receive?
Did your meeting with HR provide adequate explanations of company benefits, including medical, retirement, and job perks?
Were you given adequate details about company policies such as expected working hours, paid time off, holidays, local and federal labor laws, etc.?
Do you have a sense of company culture? What three words would you use to describe it?
Does the explanation of your job responsibilities match the job description with which you were hired? If not, where are there differences or gaps?
Have you been given any job responsibilities that are unexpected or unfamiliar? If so, do you have any concerns about them?
What was the most useful part of the onboarding process?
What part of the process was the least valuable? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?
Are there any questions that weren’t covered?
Is there anything you think should be included that you had to ask about?
Ranking Questions:
Using a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is Strongly Disagree and 5 is Strongly Agree:
I felt prepared by onboarding to take on job responsibilities right away.
I feel like a part of my team.
The company’s values align with mine.
My skills are a good match for the job.
I feel challenged and excited by the projects I’m working on.
I would recommend working here to a friend or family member.
I see a long-term future for myself here.
I feel comfortable asking for guidance from management.
I feel comfortable asking for guidance from HR.
People who work here have a good work-life balance.
New hires want to feel personally welcomed, assigned expected job responsibilities, and have the support to achieve professional goals. Crafting a thoughtful and effective onboarding process starts with getting feedback from people who’ve recently been through it. ApplicantStack makes it easier to create a positive onboarding experience with tools that streamline the process and eliminate the stack of new-hire paperwork on day one.
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