How to Build Effective Onboarding and Exit Surveys

An Employee’s Professional Journey

Any job for an employee is a fresh start from their past. Organizations want feedback for them to improve their brand and business. This is when employee surveys come in handy. Employee surveys are key to retaining employees in the organization. They can help an organization understand the needs of their teams and ensure that the future is bright for their workforce and business in every way.

An employee survey is a simple medium in which employees can connect with leaders and express their thoughts and feelings about their work experience. The expected outcome is to assess the level of employee satisfaction at the organization. Common topics to cover include compensation, workplace culture, company policies, and employee benefits. We will go into detail on two key types of employee surveys – onboarding and exit.

Onboarding Surveys

What are onboarding surveys and why are they important?

Onboarding surveys are used for employees that have recently been employed by an organization. To keep it simple, this survey measures employee satisfaction with their onboarding experience. First impressions define the foundation of a manager-employee relationship. Managers are expected to look their professional best to present a strong first impression to new employees. As an employer, you want the onboarding process to be effortless and smooth.

Here are some questions to keep in mind when creating an onboarding survey:

  • Did the employee receive all the necessary information they needed when joining?
  • Is there anything that needs to be done to improve the onboarding process?
  • Does the employee see themselves in the organization in the long term?
  • Did the employee feel welcome when they joined?
  • Were the employee’s roles and responsibilities clear to them?
  • Was the employee engaged in the explanation of their roles and responsibilities?
  • Is the employee happy working at the organization?

These surveys are crucial for employee retention. Employees need to feel wanted and validated in the workplace. Onboarding surveys can allow the hiring organization to obtain feedback and figure out how to keep their employees happy.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Onboarding Surveys

Onboarding surveys can be both a benefit and a drawback for an organization. They can either retain their reputation or completely destroy it. The beauty of many workplace surveys, including onboarding surveys, is that they are anonymous. Anonymous surveys give employees the reassurance that they can express themselves freely without having to worry about the consequences. This way, companies can willingly take the feedback and continue to improve in all ways possible.

Despite onboarding surveys sounding simple and convenient, there are drawbacks. Drawbacks include technical glitches, challenging expectations, poor initial performance, lack of employee morale, and poor communication skills in employees.

Exit Surveys

What are exit surveys and why are they important?

Exit surveys are designed to help employees provide an overall review of their experience at the organization they worked in. Exit surveys are part of the employee offboarding process. According to Vantage Circle, such a survey can help an organization figure out the true reason why an employee decided to leave. Here are some common exit survey questions to include when making such surveys:

  • Why is the employee choosing to leave?
  • In the employee’s opinion, what was the best thing about working in this company?
  • In the employee’s opinion, what was the worst thing about working in this company?
  • Did the employee enjoy coming to work?
  • Is there any way that the company culture needs to be improved?
  • Did the employee feel respected and safe enough to work here?

Benefits and Drawbacks of Exit Surveys

Exit surveys can be conversational. That is what makes them convenient and easy to answer. And it’s even more convenient to the exiting employee when the exit survey is online. This way, employees do not have to worry about answering uncomfortable questions in-person with their reporting manager or other HR staff. These surveys could be made anonymous, to encourage honest and frank feedback. But in that case, the organization loses the ability to address any issues that still exist in the exiting employee’s specific team and work environment. Learning a reason that an employee is leaving could have been addressed earlier can lead to improved work conditions for the rest of the employees if those issues are addressed.

Just like onboarding surveys, exit surveys, too, have drawbacks. When employees leave, they tend to think that their feedback does not matter. However, that is not the case. Companies and organizations want feedback for them to be successful. They want to know how can they improve their company culture and environment. According to LinkedIn, exit surveys provide companies with vital feedback on how they can improve as an overall organization.

Create Effective Onboarding and Exit Surveys with PxidaEX

PxidaEX is our employee engagement feedback tool, for building surveys for all stages of the employee journey. By building onboarding and exit surveys, businesses can get a better sense of how their employees join and leave their organization, and can implement any actionable feedback they receive from the survey responses. By placing trust in employees to provide honest feedback, the business can use that valuable feedback to continue growing and changing over time, and see an increase in employee retention, productivity, and happiness in the long run. Try PxidaEX for your business today!