Asking a new hire thoughtful questions during onboarding can help you and your team get to know the person you hired.Responses may reveal common connection points – a shared hobby or favorite movie, perhaps – across the team.
Other answers can be stored in an employee profile and used later to facilitate bonding activities or spur a thoughtful gesture.
These are the questions that are helpful to have the answers to on Day One.
Use this info to have swag ready for them on the first day of work.
Store this data to make sure you accommodate the employee’s dietary restrictions at future team events that involve food.
Understand what kind of flexibility the employee might need as they take care of their children.
These questions help you get to know your new hire a little bit better.
Find common connection points with your new hire.
Keep this information on hand for later when someone might want to surprise the employee with a coffee, take them to lunch, or give them a gift.
On an important work anniversary or birthday, you could help the employee achieve or work towards one of their bucket list items, for example by giving them a voucher for skydiving or some gear to summit a mountain.
These tools help you understand the way that your new hire operates.
The importance of love languages extends beyond romantic relationships. Knowing a colleague's love language is an effective way to know how to celebrate them after a massive project or achievement.
The True Colors test was designed to categorize people into four different learning styles, and provide insight into strengths and weaknesses of each style. Knowing which team members relate to which color can provide the group with insight into how they can work together better.
Ask your new employee to draw a map of their mind and what they care and think about most. Vague instructions will yield a dramatically different approach from employee to employee, which can be fun.
One caution on personality assessments: make sure these activities don't isolate any team members, especially if they’re the only one of a certain learning style or language. These activities should be used to provide general insight, not to box people into rigid categories.
Trust us, the answers to this question will blow you away. From jet packs, to baguettes (so they could eat their arms throughout the week), to snakes, to pillows… this question tells you much more about a person than one would expect.
This question is a fun way to elicit what someone's first hobbies were, or to find out their favorite childhood snacks.
Maybe someone's perfect impression of Owen Wilson will come in handy at the holiday party! This question prompts people to share all sorts of fun things.
This is a sweet one because at some point in the future, such as a work anniversary, you can buy the person the candy bar they said represents them.
Play 20 questions with the new employee, but also give the new employee the chance to ask 20 questions to the team. There’s likely not time for every team member to answer 20 questions each, so instead have team members jump in to answer questions.
Examples of questions the onboardee could ask the team could be:
Consider asking employees to add a slide about themselves to a presentation in which each team member has made a slide about themselves with fun facts from their lives. Here at ChartHop, we have the new hire present their slide at their first all-hands meeting.
Consider asking the employee to answer a list of questions and choose 3-5 to share at a team luncheon.
Surveying a new hire at various points in their onboarding process helps you identify gaps in getting your new hire up to speed.
Here’s an even more comprehensive list of 30-60-90 day check-in questions.
Onboarding is a powerful moment to get to know your new hires and use that information to create a more inclusive environment. It’s also a chance to iterate on your company’s strengths and weaknesses based on the feedback you get.