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

Concept: Onboarding and Exit Questions

You can set up Onboarding and Exit questions through the dedicated Onboarding and Exit question sets, or through Open-ended questions available in Peakon.
The Onboarding questions focus on the employee expectations of the job description and the available resources to be effective in their role, while the Exit questions focus on the employees' reasons for leaving. Together they provide further insights into what your organization can improve to avoid future attrition and replace the need for exit surveys.

Question Sets Overview

Peakon provides two dedicated Onboarding and Exit question sets.
Both Onboarding and Exit are structured in a driver / sub-driver structure framed across chronological stages and reasons for leaving.
For Onboarding we offer 5 drivers with 5 sub-drivers per driver:
  • Orientation
  • Alignment
  • Integrating
  • Thriving
  • Contributing
For Exit we offer 7 drivers, with 1 or 2 sub-drivers per driver:
  • Culture
  • Development
  • Experience
  • Leadership
  • Recognition & Reward
  • Role
  • Wellbeing

Analysis

There are key differences between the Onboarding and Exit question sets to the core question sets based on the new question set structure.
Feature
Difference
Rationale
Question set dashboard
The Onboarding and Exit question sets does not have a dashboard.
Review your results in the heat map, question scores and driver scores.
The Onboarding and Exit question sets do not have outcome questions, therefore a question set dashboard cannot be produced.
Outcome and Main question
The Onboarding and Exit does not have an outcome question or main question.
View the stages of Onboarding through the driver scores with specific sub-driver scores for each element.
Onboarding and Exit are operational processes, not psychological constructs like Engagement. These processes vary across different stages, it's impractical to measure specific outcomes. Instead, it is crucial to understand how the process functions at different points.
Benchmarks
The Onboarding and Exit does not have external benchmarks.
You can view company benchmarks (internally) when you compare segment scores.
Onboarding and Exit are varied processes between businesses, industries and roles. For some, an onboarding process will be a matter of days, for others 6-9 months. For this reason, we don't provide external benchmarks.
Curated insights
Curated insights will not show an Onboarding and Exit question overview.
See the biggest driver change across all question sets, including Onboarding and Exit.
Onboarding and Exit does not have a main question. Question sets that have either an outcome or main question show up consistently in the question set dashboard.
Improve
Improve will not have Onboarding and Exit content as part of the launch of the new question set.
Onboarding and Exit are varied processes between businesses, industries and roles. For some an onboarding process will be a matter of days, for others 6-9 months. Trying to unify content to cover this spread of different approaches is not useful for organisations.
Semantic topics
Semantic topics do not exist yet for Onboarding and Exit.
Semantic topics take development time and investment. These are being worked on alongside the question sets. They need to be readied and finalised, and then coded into the product.
View Previous Round
Your access control permissions and reporting line dictates the previous rounds you can select.
This is useful for comparative analysis and ensures that standard performance and engagement metrics are not skewed by these unique segments.

Considerations

Activity
Considerations
Question rotation algorithm
  • Algorithm applies to question sets, except when using question timings.
  • Evaluate appropriate survey and question frequency.
    • With question frequency Always all active questions will be included in survey.
    • Suitable survey frequency depends on targeting.
Survey strategy
  • Include question sets in existing schedule or set up separate schedule.
    • We recommend setting up a separate schedule.
  • Ask all questions at once, or stagger questions.
    • Especially relevant for Onboarding.
    • If you have staggering questions, consider targeting questions accordingly.
Survey and questions targeting
  • Consider how you want to target the survey and questions.Is the needed data already available in Peakon?
  • Be cautious with customizing ranges for
    Hire
    and
    Termination date
    attributes. This can impact True Benchmark, Attrition and Employee Experience Cycle.
Rule Based Questions
  • When using question timings for Onboarding and Exit question sets, the question rotation algorithm does not apply to those questions.
  • You can only set question timings when using a weekly survey schedule. For Exit surveys, you can configure questions for before termination, after termination, or both. Onboarding surveys, questions can only use after rules (Example: 2 weeks after hiring).
  • You must include the employee's Personal email addresses to survey exited employees.
Review survey data
  • Visibility thresholds and score aggregation apply.
    • Managers may never exceed thresholds.
  • Consider who should be able to review survey responses. Example:
    • Senior leaders
    • Human Resources
    • Program managers

Configuration

Both Onboarding and Exit questions are available to be configured on the
Administration
Question Library
page and can be enabled on the
Frequency
tab of the survey schedule configuration page in
Administration
Schedules
.
Peakon automatically suggests the optimal timings for each question to be asked. Alternatively, you can also set up your own question timings. For more information, visit Concept: Onboarding and Exit Question Timing and Set Up Question Timings.
When configuring the question sets, consider:
  • Review the milestones
    :
    Orientation
    ,
    Alignment
    ,
    Integrating
    ,
    Thriving
    and
    Contributing
    are the core aspects of our Onboarding model. The model has been designed this way such that each aspect acts as a milestone or point in time, but is adaptable to different Onboarding processes. Make sure you review these and switch on or off any milestones. Your process may be longer or shorter and your organization may have different activities during this process. For Exit surveys: The model is organized around Exit reasons, ensuring questions capture the most relevant feedback based on why employees are leaving. You can configure which reasons to include and decide whether questions should be asked before termination, after termination, or both.
  • Review fit for purpose
    : Review the questions to ensure these are representative of the questions you wish to ask your organization.
  • Add your own questions
    : You have the ability to add your own questions, if applicable. These can be added as questions against the driver or the sub-driver.
  • Question timings or targeting
    : Use our question timings, or alternatively select the segments you want to target and the tenure segment that reflect new joiners and leavers of your organization.

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions have Onboarding and Exit questions, with translations available in all supported languages. Unlike the Onboarding and Exit question sets, these questions allow you to capture comments only with no scores. Organizations are also able to add their own custom questions and target them at the relevant segment for Tenure and Termination date. Our recommendation is to use our dedicated question sets.
It’s not possible to set up Question Timings for open-ended questions.
These standard open-ended onboarding questions are available already:
  • As someone who has recently joined [company name], what aspects of our onboarding process worked well and what could we do better?
  • Based on your recent experiences, do you have any feedback that could improve our recruitment process at [company name]?
  • Considering the expectations you had about your role and [company name] before you started, how do you feel they've been met so far?
These standard open-ended offboarding questions are available already:
  • Do you feel the responsibilities for your role changed since you were hired?
  • Would you say that you had adequate resources to do your job to the best of your ability?