6 steps to improving your employee onboarding experience

First days matter. Whether you’re welcoming one new hire or one hundred, onboarding is your chance to make a lasting first impression. It’s how you turn an accepted offer into an engaged teammate—and how you show new employees that they made the right choice joining your company.

But too often, onboarding feels like paperwork and process instead of connection and culture. The fix? Make onboarding more interactive, personalized, and human—the same way you’d approach great customer experiences.

Here’s how to improve your employee onboarding process with Typeform—so you can scale a warm welcome without losing the personal touch.

1. Personalize every new hire’s first day

No two employees start from the same place. Roles, locations, learning styles, and even tech comfort levels all vary. Personalized onboarding helps you meet people where they are and sets them up for success faster.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Send a Preboarding Survey before day one to collect role details, preferences, and expectations.
• Use Logic Jumps to adapt the experience for remote, hybrid, or in-office employees.
• Sync responses to your HRIS or Slack to automatically notify managers about new hire needs.

Before their start date, send a short survey asking:

“What’s your preferred communication style?”
“Do you want your first week to be more structured or flexible?”

Their answers help tailor the first-week schedule, training plan, and even the welcome message.

💡 Template to try: Employee Onboarding Form Template →

2. Turn paperwork into a conversation

Let’s face it—traditional onboarding forms are nobody’s favorite. Endless PDFs and dense HR portals make a new hire’s first week feel like red tape, not a warm welcome. Typeform’s conversational format flips that experience on its head.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Use one-question-at-a-time onboarding forms to make admin tasks simple and approachable.
• Add friendly intro screens and light brand touches to reflect your culture.
• Embed video messages from team leaders or founders directly in the form to make it personal.

Instead of sending an email with multiple attachments, send a form where new hires can upload documents, complete their bio, and get a short welcome video from the CEO—all in one flow.

💡 Template to try: New Hire Form →

3. Automate the admin—but keep the human touch

Automation doesn’t have to mean impersonal. With Typeform integrations, you can eliminate repetitive manual work while keeping every interaction warm and thoughtful.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Connect Typeform to Slack, Notion, or Google Sheets to notify teams when a new hire completes their form.
• Trigger automated welcome emails or checklist tasks via Zapier or Make.
• Use personalized follow-ups to thank new hires or share their onboarding roadmap.

4. Design onboarding around connection, not completion

Most onboarding programs focus on checklists: forms signed, training done, boxes ticked. But real onboarding success comes from belonging and connection. Use interactive tools to make those human moments easier to scale.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Run an “About You” survey for new hires, then share highlights in Slack or during introductions.
• Create an icebreaker quiz to match new hires with mentors or team buddies.
• Collect manager feedback on how the onboarding experience went using a quick follow-up Typeform.

5. Collect feedback early and often

You can’t improve onboarding if you don’t measure it. Feedback from new hires helps you spot friction points and celebrate what’s working.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Send a First Week Feedback Form to capture initial impressions.
• Follow up at 30 and 90 days to measure satisfaction and engagement.
• Use Typeform analytics to track completion rates and identify trends over time.

6. Keep evolving your process

A great onboarding experience is never “done.” Roles, teams, and expectations change—and your onboarding should evolve alongside them.

How to do it with Typeform:

• Analyze onboarding survey data quarterly to spot patterns.
• Create pulse surveys for hiring managers to evaluate new-hire readiness.
• Iterate your forms and flows based on real feedback—no developer required.

Build a better first day

Employee onboarding shouldn’t feel like bureaucracy—it should feel like joining a team. With the right forms and surveys at the right time, you can collect the details you need, share the warmth of your culture, and design an onboarding experience that scales without losing its human touch.

✨ Ready to create a better first day?

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Welcome your new hire with Typeform

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