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Peakon
Last Updated: 2026-05-15
Concept: Onboarding and Exit Question Timing

Concept: Onboarding and Exit Question Timing

Context

Rule-based questions enable administrators to schedule Onboarding and Exit questions at specific points in an employee's journey.
You can set up the question timings for Onboarding and Exit questions to ensure they're asked to employees at the most relevant moments.

Configuration

Configure question timings for the Onboarding and Exit question sets to define when questions should be asked.
The question timing triggers each specific question based on the following configuration criteria:
  • Employee’s
    Hire date
     for Onboarding and
    Termination date
     for Exit.
  • The next survey round date.
  • The question timing set
Bulk
add question timings
 to your Onboarding and Exit question sets to enable them. It automatically sets the relevant timing for employees to receive the Onboarding and Exit questions. Rules can be asked in days or weeks.
If the suggested timings are not in line with your company's Onboarding or Exit experiences, you can set a custom timing. For more information, visit Edit Onboarding and Exit Question Timings.
Set the survey schedule to a weekly survey frequency for the Onboarding and Exit surveys. Question timings won't apply if the frequency is not set to weekly.
Setting a weekly survey frequency does not ensure that all employees will receive timed questions each week. At the time of the scheduled survey, the system will check to see if employees are eligible for any questions that week, based on the rules. If there aren't any, they won’t be added to the weekly survey round.

Grace Period

To ensure timeliness and relevance, there is a maximum of 7 days (including the date an employee is eligible) between when the rule applies and when an employee receives the Onboarding or Exit questions with applied rules. It’s applied on the day an employee is eligible to receive the question. This ensures the questions are only added to a single survey round.
The grace period is 7 days including the eligibility date, which results in 6 additional days before the next survey round begins.
It also prevents the same questions from being sent to employees in subsequent survey rounds. Peakon ensures that once employees receive the questions, they cannot receive them again because they are no longer relevant.
This 6-day grace period applies to all rule-based questions. Example: For a
2 weeks before termination
 rule. The grace period cannot be changed to ensure they're not added to multiple survey rounds.

Question Rotation

When you set question timings on a weekly survey schedule, the question rotation algorithm does not apply to those questions. Peakon follows the question timings set and assesses employee eligibility based on the configuration criteria. If an employee meets the criteria for the set timings, the system automatically includes the questions in their surveys.

Exit Considerations

  • To survey employees after departure, their personal email address must be included in their employee profile. You can sync this data from your HRIS (by enabling the Personal email field) or add it manually. For manual steps, visit Bulk Update Email Addresses.
  • Exit surveys require 2 schedules: For pre-exit questions, use the Employed schedule type. Use Left for post-exit questions.
  • Questions for exited employees are delivered only once per employee and won’t be repeated across future survey rounds. If an employee meets multiple exit rules, they can receive more than one set of questions, but no single rule will repeat across future survey rounds.
  • When using an HRIS sync, ensure Termination Dates and Termination Reasons are provided in advance so rules apply correctly. Also review the
    Inclusion of former employees
     and
    Deletion of former employees settings
    , as these control how long exited employees remain available for survey rules and data aggregation.
For more information, visit Concept: Surveying Exited Employees.