Joining
90-day new hire survey
At three months most people have a fair idea which bits of your onboarding helped, and some will have started wondering whether they want to stay.
Opens this survey in Gists as a draft you can edit. Sign in with Slack, Google or your work email. 30 days free. No card needed.
What a 14-wave study found
Kammeyer-Mueller and colleagues followed 264 newcomers through their first 90 days, surveying them 14 times. Support from coworkers and supervisors fell during that period. Early support and undermining had more to do with outcomes after 90 days than any later rise or fall, and undermining by a supervisor was linked with leaving (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013). The authors suggest the early weeks may lay a foundation, so treat a poor day-90 result as a late warning.
It pairs with the Bauer meta-analysis of 70 samples, in which adjustment was linked to intentions to remain and to turnover (Bauer et al., 2007).
Day 30 or day 90?
If you want a chance to change things for the person in front of you, the 30-day survey comes early enough to do that.
The survey
Looking back, how well did onboarding prepare you for your role?
1 = not at all, 5 = extremely well
Which parts of onboarding were most useful?
Pick any, optional
- Manager one-to-ones
- Buddy or peer support
- Written guides and docs
- Training sessions
- Shadowing colleagues
- Learning on the job
How long did it take before you felt productive?
Pick one
- I do not feel there yet
- Over 2 months
- 1 to 2 months
- 2 to 4 weeks
- Under 2 weeks
How settled do you feel in your team today?
1 = not at all settled, 5 = fully settled
Can you see yourself growing here over the next year?
Pick one
- No
- Probably not
- Unsure
- Probably
- Yes
If you could change one thing about how we onboard people, what would it be?
Written answer, optional
We wrote these questions for this survey and they are not a validated scale. You can edit them once the survey opens in Gists. If you copy them into another tool, check what it records about who answered.
Before you run this
Keep this apart from any probation decision, and tell people that. In Gists, results need 5 answers, so review it by cohort.
The decision it helps with
Which parts of onboarding should you change or cut, and who needs a conversation about their future here?
Running it
At day 90, separate from any probation decision, so people aren't answering with the decision in mind. Results wait until 5 people have answered, so plan to read them cohort by cohort.
What the results might look like
These are made-up examples to show the patterns, not real data.
One role takes much longer to feel productive
most say 2 to 4 weeks, but three people in one role say “Over 2 months”.
- What it means
- That role's preparation is thinner than others.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't say those three are slower. The role may just be harder to learn.
- What to do
- Read that role's documents and compare what's missing with a role that ramps up faster.
A session gets no votes
no one in a cohort of 8 picks “Training sessions” on question 2.
- What it means
- It isn't landing with this cohort.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't prove the content is useless.
- What to do
- Change or drop it for one cohort and see if anything gets worse.
Unsure about growing here
a third of a cohort answer “Unsure” or “Probably not” on question 5.
- What it means
- A good share of the cohort doesn't see where they'd go next.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't mean they're leaving, and three months is early for a firm view.
- What to do
- Offer career conversations to everyone at the three-month point, with no one singled out.
What to tell people afterwards
Tell the cohort what changed in onboarding because of what they said.
What to measure next, and when
A stay survey at about nine months. If support dropped off, look at what happens in weeks 4 to 12.
If you hire in small numbers
Results show only when 5 or more people answer. A team below 5 rolls up into the team above it. A group is also held back when comparing it with another group could reveal a small team. HR and named leaders see every team with 5 or more answers. Each manager sees only their own team. Employees see no team scores. Themes only by default. Word-for-word answers are a company setting, off unless turned on, and employees see a notice before they write.
Related
Sources
- Kammeyer-Mueller, J., Wanberg, C., Rubenstein, A., Song, Z. (2013). Support, Undermining, and Newcomer Socialization: Fitting in During the First 90 Days. Academy of Management Journal, 56, 1104-1124. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0791
- Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 707-721. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.707