How to create an employee retention program (leading with surveys)
Step-by-step guide to help you understand how to create an employee retention program led by surveys. Including example questions to ask.
Read MoreDid you know that 1 in 3 employees leave their organisation before the first year is up? (Effectory). Creating a good onboarding experience is a necessity when looking to improve employee retention.
By asking for feedback in an employee’s early days, you can show them you care about their experience and value their feedback, influencing their overall engagement. Onboarding surveys give you the ability to capture that feedback in a structured way that allows employees to share their thoughts and feelings anonymously.
Here at Stribe, we’ve always believed the employee feedback gathered via employee surveys is essential to an organisation’s success.
In this article, we’re covering the world of employee onboarding surveys and how to improve employee retention with surveys. Continue reading to discover how you can create effective surveys for your team, and the best way to create employee retention strategies with the feedback you gain.
A recent study found that when new employees have a good onboarding experience, they are more likely to be engaged and therefore 18 times more committed to their organisation(Georgiev, 2023).
The drivers of employee engagement and retention in new employees include:
As you grow – or priorities shift in your team – you may find that the hiring process becomes inefficient, or creates minor issues that go unresolved. This can lead to low employee engagement and retention. Having a clear and purposeful onboarding process will reduce turnover by making employees feel valued, helping them integrate with their team, and aligning them with your organisation’s mission and vision.
A recent survey found that only 52% of new hires felt satisfied with the onboarding experience at their job (Paychex, 2023). When onboarding sets employees up for success they’re less likely to jump ship. That same study found that only 7% of employees who felt well-trained after onboarding planned to leave their jobs soon, while 70% said they planned to stay.
Losing a new employee potentially points to a poor onboarding process. Onboarding surveys are a powerful tool for recruitment and HR teams. They are a great way to hear your new employees’ feedback and understand what matters to them. Employee surveys are trusted, can be automated, and provide instant reports which means you can get really rich insights without too much time invested.
Whilst most think of onboarding surveys as surveys specifically for new hires, they can measure the experience of employees at any point during the recruitment and onboarding process. Some popular types of onboarding surveys include:
Recruitment – gather feedback from new employees about their experience during the recruitment and interview process with your company.
Pre-onboarding – learn more about employees’ experiences before their first day. These can include questions about paperwork, team communication, and more.
First Day – once employees have started at your company, use these surveys to ask questions about their first day on the job. This helps you understand the first impression your organisation gives.
First Fortnight – after new team members have had a few weeks to settle in, they may be able to identify issues with more clarity than before.
First Three Months – understand more about how your employee feels now they have reached the end of their first quarter in the company. Use the right questions to prompt new hires to reflect on their employee onboarding experience and how well it prepared them for the duties they faced in their first months on the job.
All of these surveys combined will offer your company valuable insights. It may seem like a lot of work which is why we recommend using survey software – like Stribe – that automates these based on employee start dates.
To improve employee retention, it’s important to understand the drivers influencing turnover amongst new employees. The best approach involves using surveys to gather insights directly from employees. Research shows that even the most basic efforts to gather feedback from employees can help reduce turnover. Companies that seek regular employee feedback have been found to have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower than those that don’t.
Here are some of the ways onboarding surveys can help you reduce employee turnover:
Part of creating a good onboarding experience for employees is asking the right questions in your employee onboarding survey. As you craft your onboarding survey, think about the insights you’d like to get from employees. Some of the questions we like to use in onboarding surveys are:
Questions about recruitment
Questions about pre-onboarding
Questions about the onboarding processes
Questions about their role
Questions about the onboarding experience
Download our employee retention action planning template for more ideas about how you can implement this in your day-to-day.
Sending a survey is only the start of your journey to improving employee retention. There are many factors you need to keep in mind to guarantee high response rates and accurate, detailed feedback from your employees. These are:
Common mistakes with employee surveys
There are many survey providers you can use to create your onboarding surveys such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. However, for a specialised problem, you should use a specialised solution. Employee survey tools, like Stribe, make it easier than ever to create onboarding surveys that are truly trusted by employees.
Make sure you choose a platform that gives you the ability to create custom questions, and automatically send surveys on a schedule that suits you and your team. Without this, you won’t gather the insights you need to create real change.
Stribe does all of this and more, book a demo today.
Step-by-step guide to help you understand how to create an employee retention program led by surveys. Including example questions to ask.
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