Essential Onboarding Metrics to Improve Employee Experience and Your Bottom Line

Good onboarding sets the stage for remarkable employee experience and work output. 

But how would you know your onboarding process is "good" without tracking it? 

Take Online Optimism as an example. Without tracking their onboarding, they wouldn't have noticed they retained more employees who received introductions to non-departmental staff than those who did not. 

Alasco, Roadsurfer, and Storyblock could identify changes in new hire time-to-productivity, employee satisfaction, and engagement by measuring onboarding metrics. 

Read this article to learn how to measure onboarding to improve your onboarding journey, work output, and talent retention rates. Just like Alasco, Online Optimism, and Roadsurfer did.

📈 What are employee onboarding metrics and KPIs?

Onboarding metrics measure the performance and progress of your employee onboarding process. 

Some examples of onboarding metrics are: 

• onboarding completion time; 
• top performers; 
• new hire training completion rate; 
• time to productivity etc.

Generally, your onboarding metrics will be more operational. Onboarding KPIs, in contrast, measure performance based on key business goals, objectives, and organizational needs. So, your KPIs should be more strategic by nature. 

Let's say your company wants to improve employee retention. Key indicators would include:

• employee engagement score; 
• first-week satisfaction score, and 
• employee net promoter score. 

Some extra examples of onboarding KPIs are:

• new hire turnover rate;
• new hire job satisfaction rate;
• resource-saving due to onboarding automation.

Not all metrics are KPIs, but all KPIs are metrics. Indicators link back to your company goals and needs.

But both your onboarding metrics and KPIs will reveal the degree of success and effectiveness of your process.

There are multiple methods to measure the progress and impact of your onboarding process. 

For instance, you can send an onboarding survey after or during their onboarding to measure satisfaction and employee perceived preparedness. 

Another method is using a software solution to track your employees' progress. 

For example, how many steps have they completed on their onboarding journey? 

Tip: When using onboarding software, you can easily integrate an eNPS survey as a final step of the onboarding journey and aggregate the data across your entire cohort of new joiners.

🏆 3 Key benefits of tracking onboarding metrics

Improving the employee onboarding experience 

The main benefit of tracking your onboarding process is understanding how employees perceive your company's onboarding journey. 

Knowing their feelings about their journey and the actions that evoked said feelings can help you improve their employee onboarding experience. 

HBR seconds that better onboarding experiences lead to better new employee engagement, talent retention, and confidence in new hires.

So, if you track properly, you'll discover:

• What makes new hires satisfied or dissatisfied with their experience. 
• The onboarding steps they struggle with. 
• Specific task completion time.
• What actions increase or decrease retention. 
• Reasons for low time to productivity.

Identifying inconsistencies across departments

You can also segment your metrics into cohorts (a group of people with a shared characteristic) and perform further analysis.

For instance, you can measure how the onboarding experiences differ across departments, managers, and employee backgrounds. This way, you can identify the root cause of each employee's good or poor onboarding experience. 

For example, you could discover that poor onboarding experiences relate to a manager, not a company process. 

To top it off, if employees are happy with their experience, they will become advocates for your company which attracts quality talents.

Increasing retention

"Tracking onboarding has allowed us to understand our new hires better, how fast we can onboard them, what processes need to be streamlined or changed, and what excites them about their job and the business." Mark Seemann, Founder of StaffCircle, an HR management platform.

Online Optimism, a marketing agency, also focuses on retention. Flynn Zaiger, CEO of Online Optimism, stresses:  

"Tracking onboarding metrics has helped our company spot opportunities to increase retention. It also helps us immediately identify weak performers to provide training or rehire them. You want to make employees feel, so they don't go job hunting again." 

➡️ Here are some onboarding templates to give you a head start to more structured and rewarding employee experiences. 

📏 4 Ways to measure onboarding for better employee retention

There are two main ways to measure your onboarding—surveys and onboarding software.

You can send out several types of surveys to gather insights on your onboarding process; however, we'll focus on three main ones. 

New hire onboarding survey

You can send out this survey type during or after onboarding an employee. 

Tip: For honest answers, it's best practice to make them anonymous. 

This questionnaire helps you improve and decide:

• How satisfied the employee is with the onboarding process.
• Their understanding of their goals and accountabilities 
• How they get used to the materials, tools, and equipment. 
• They understand the company's vision, mission, and culture. 

Questions in your new hire onboarding survey depend on what you're trying to learn from your employee. 

Here are ten questions to ask during an onboarding survey:

1. Were you provided sufficient information about the company during recruitment?
2. How could we improve the recruitment process?
3. What are your three reasons for joining this organization?
4. What are the best three things about being [company name] 's employee
5. What could we change or add to improve our onboarding process?
6. Do the job descriptions and responsibilities explained at the beginning accurately reflect your work experience?
7. Do you see yourself staying with this company for five years?
8. Do you feel confident using the company's software, tools, and systems?
9. Do the people around you help you succeed in your job?
10.  Have your experiences so far matched your expectations?

Tip: Keep surveys short (10 questions max) and conduct multiple onboarding surveys during the various phases of onboarding. 

Pulse surveys

Employee pulse surveys are short and fast surveys on a determined frequency(weekly, monthly, or quarterly). They touch on subjects such as employee satisfaction, work relationships, and work environment.

You can use pulse surveys to determine: 

• Workplace satisfaction;
• Sense of belonging;
• Employee Net Promoter Score(eNPS);
• Well-being; 
• Growth and development; 
• Alignment with company culture, etc. 

Here are some pulse survey questions to ask:

• "How likely are you to recommend this workplace to a friend or colleague?"
• "What should my company start doing/keep doing/stop doing?"
• "I am satisfied with the frequency my manager and I communicate."
• "I feel comfortable giving opinions and feedback to my manager."
• "I have manageable stress at work."
• "I feel that my individual goals strongly align with our team goals."

💡 Do you want to learn more about pulse surveys? Check out our separate resource, where you'll discover best practices, more sample questions, and a small case study.

Employee engagement surveys

Engagement surveys are perfect for gauging the enthusiasm and dedication of an employee toward their job.

You can run an engagement survey quarterly or annually to: 

• Give employees a voice, 
• Determine how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with their jobs, 
• Increase engagement. 

Here are some questions to ask in your employee engagement survey:

• How satisfied are you with your ability to apply your skills in this role?
• Are you proud of your role on this team?
• How satisfied are you with the relationship with your manager?
• Are you motivated by the work you do for the company?
• Did your onboarding prepare you enough for your role?

Onboarding software

Onboarding software is a tool you can use to automate and streamline your company's onboarding process. 

Software solutions enable better onboarding experiences for employees and less administrative work, and higher-quality insights for People managers.

Roadsurfer and Storyblok used Zavvy's onboarding software to track metrics such as:

• onboarding completion time; 
• employee onboarding ratings; 
• time to productivity;
• engagement rates. 

Using good onboarding software, you can measure metrics like: 

• Time to completion: How long it takes employees to get through the content?
• Completion rate: How many steps did they complete?
• Top performers: who is most vs. who is least engaged?
• Completion rate for managers: Which managers take more or less time for their new hires?
• Time spent on an onboarding journey: How much time do new hires spend using the software?
• Engagement: Do they come back to the onboarding content after a while?

💡 6 Best practices to get the most out of your onboarding metrics

Defining a suitable and actionable metric 

Decide the metrics you need to track based on your company goals, needs, and objectives. 

To define your goals:

1. Write out why you want to track your onboarding. E.g., improve retention rate, the onboarding process, and employee experience, or decrease the new hire time to productivity.
2. Find out which onboarding activities affect your goal(s). 

For instance, time to productivity would include completion time, first task completion, feedback on the first task, etc. 

All these are your actional and suitable metrics tied to business needs. 

"My advice for anyone looking to track onboarding experiences is to tailor your metrics to how your company operates. Learn from past experiences and change them accordingly. 

I believe the most common mistake managers make when onboarding is having unclear goals or expectations of the process." Mark Seemann, Founder of StaffCircle. 

Consult stakeholders 

Flynn Zaiger, CEO of Optimism, said it all:

"Talk to leadership about their reporting needs before deciding on the onboarding metrics to track. Individual leaders might identify key metrics they want to be measured, which are far harder to implement after the fact." 

Build people-centric measurement systems 

Create company onboarding goals and KPIs based on employees' needs to have a good experience rather than only what stakeholders want to measure.

Interview employees during recruitment and ask, "What does a good onboarding look like to you?" and "What do you need to feel welcomed and ready for your first assignment?"

Document metrics clearly and transparently

Documenting your metrics helps you to have an accurate historical record of how your onboarding has changed over time. And it also helps you test whether your new onboarding practices are paying off. 

Flynn Zaiger suggests: 

"Finding a platform that makes reporting easy and allows you to export your data. Your stakeholders may change over time and require different measurements. Exporting your data into a spreadsheet or other system will allow for more interoperability over time."

Avoid vanity metrics

Not every metric is worth tracking. 

Define suitable and actionable metrics based on your business goals. 

"Managers often like measuring things they know they'll perfect well on, like the speed of onboarding. While this is good for a nice confidence boost for the manager, it doesn't help you determine the impact that onboarding has on your staff." Flynn Zaiger.

Align onboarding with feedback and performance

Onboarding effectiveness happens when you integrate your process with feedback and performance. 

You can link onboarding metrics and constructive 360 feedback to help employees discover the extra training they need. 

You can use the insights from 360 feedback and the steps you have identified (e.g., supplementary product training) and create a development plan.

📐 9 KPIs and metrics to measure onboarding effectiveness and success

Employee satisfaction index (ESI)

The employee satisfaction index measures an employee's satisfaction with a given situation to understand whether they're happy about their onboarding. 

If ESI is low, you'd know your onboarding process needs improvement.  

You can calculate this metric through three main questions:

• How satisfied are you with your onboarding process?
• How well does(did) your onboarding meet your expectations?
• How close is(was) your current onboarding to your ideal one? 

Tip #1: You can decide if to opt for a 1 - 10 scale or a 1 - 5 one.

Tip #2: You can include more questions depending on the data you need. 

To calculate ESI: 

Let's say you send a 10-scale, 5-question survey.

Multiply the number of questions in the survey to the highest possible score: 5 x 10 = 50.

Then, sum the scores from each question (from one employee), let's say 35. Divide the by the multiplied core, which is 50 = 0.7. Then multiply 70%. The chosen employees' ESI is 70%. 

To get the ESI for all employees, sum all individual ESIs and divide by the total number of employees.

Employee net promoter score (eNPS)

This metric measures whether your employees are brand advocates and whether this it relates to your onboarding. This metric helps you understand if your onboarding affects employee loyalty and advocacy. 

To measure eNPS:

1. Ask, "Based on your recent experience, how likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" 
2. Then a follow-up question asking, "What's your primary reason for your score?" 
3. Then finally, "Would you like your manager to contact you about your experience? If so, add your contact information below."

To calculate eNPS:

First, you need to understand three keywords: promotors, passives, and detractors.

• Promotors are employees that respond with either 9 or 10 in the survey.
• Passives are employees who respond between 7 and 8, which shows they are neutral 
• Detractors are employees who score below 6. 

% of promotors = Add all 9s and 10s divided by the number of employees that choose them, then times by 100. 

% of detractors = Add all the numbers below six and divide by the number of employees that pick so. 

eNPS = % of promotors - % of detractors. The percentage or the sum of passives are not necessary.

New hire turnover rate 

The new hire turnover rate measures the number of new hires that have left the company after a specific period (a month, quarter, or year). 

Turnover rates signal the health of your company's employee experience from recruitment, employee experience benefits, and compensation.

The new hire turnover rate could include employees who voluntarily or involuntarily exited your company. 

To calculate the new hire turnover rate:

Total number of employees that left within a specific period divided by the total number of employees that the company hired within that period multiplied by 100

You can decide to calculate only the number of employees (hired within a specific period) who involuntarily (or voluntarily) left divided by the total number of employees hired within that period times a hundred.

New hire retention rate

The new hire retention rate measures the total number of new hires a company retained over a specific period. 

Like your turnover rate, your retention rate points to the health of your employee/people experience and your employee retention strategy.

To calculate the new hire retention rate:

Divide the total number of recent employees that stayed at your company by the total number of employees hired within that period.

Training completion rate

The training completion rate measures the percentage of people who completed their onboarding training. 

Use this metric to gauge how engaging your onboarding programs and materials are and how they relate to new hire time to productivity. 

To calculate the training completion rate:

Divide the total number of employees who completed onboarding training by the total number of employees assigned to the training and multiply by 100.

Time to productivity

Time to productivity measures the time it takes hires to start generating value for the company or how long it takes them to do the work you hired them for well.

Calculating this metric is not as straightforward as others. You first need to determine the KPIs of each role or each task. 

To calculate time to productivity: 

After assigning a task to a new hire, calculate the days it takes them to complete the task or achieve those KPIs from their start date (Not when you assigned the task). Include the days used for revision as well.

To calculate the average for all the new hires from a given period, add the total number of days for all new hires over a given period and divide it by the total of new hires. 

You can also multiply it by 100 to find the percentage. 

This metric can also reveal if you've included the necessary materials employees need to complete the job and if you've done so in the proper format.

Cost of optimum productivity

The cost of getting to optimum productivity measures the investment in recruiting and training a new hire to get a job done. It helps you calculate how much it costs to hire and onboard an employee and how much time it takes for them to be productive. 

To calculate the cost of optimum productivity: 

Sum the cost of recruitment with the cost of training. 

Some of these costs could include the following: 

• Advertising 
• Recruiter fees
• Drug tests
• Lost sales/ops while positions remained unfilled
• Background checks etc. 

It helps you determine the ROI of your onboarding software and the time it has saved you.

Time saved on admin tasks

Time saved is the number of hours saved while using onboarding software to automate your onboarding process. It helps you determine the ROI of your onboarding software and the time it has saved you. 

Calculating this metric is more mental work than mathematics. 

Try to figure out how much time you spent manually onboarding employees vs. how much time you spent using an onboarding automation tool.

Onboarding journey completion time

Onboarding journey completion time refers to the time new hires use to complete their onboarding journey. 

You can quickly get this metric from your onboarding software. 

Tip #1: Ask candidates what they expect from their onboarding process from the interview stage. 

Tip #2: Also, create follow-up surveys to identify the onboarding process's weak points. 

Tip #3: Finally, use Glassdoor reviews to hear about new hire experiences. 

After tracking their onboarding, Online optimism created a buddy system to help new employees hang out with non-departmental staff and improve employee retention.

➡️ Ensure more rewarding onboarding experiences with Zavvy

Onboarding metrics are a form of feedback. So use this feedback accordingly to improve employee experience and company goals. 

Remember Online Optimism? 

After tracking their onboarding, Online Optimism created a buddy system to help new employees hang out with non-departmental staff. This new approach helped them improve their employee retention. 

But remember that each employee is different and requires different levels of support, so gather feedback directly from them about their journey and how to improve their experience. 

Zavvy's onboarding software will help you: 

• Reduce time spent onboarding employees. 
• Automate metrics collection.  
• Connect your new hire's onboarding journeys to their 360-feedback software to get a complete view of your employee's growth and experience.

See it all in action in a free 30 minutes demo with our onboarding experts.