Lifecycle surveys are a foundational block in your employee listening strategy. How employees feel about your organization may change over time. By surveying your employees at specific times in their tenure and career journey, you’re able to collect targeted listening data. Then, you can use that data to uncover the true meaning behind your employee voice.

The main benefit of lifecycle surveys is that they offer your organization the opportunity to listen to employees during very specific milestones. These surveys not only allow you to set baselines, but also identify trends over time. Lifecycle surveys allow you to collect feedback about your onboarding process or identify when a particular issue is causing a large amount of exits from your company.

The most common times to send employee lifecycle surveys are during employee acquisition, onboarding, and exit. The employee experience can look remarkably different at these three stages.

While your organization may have a unique structure, you can usually include lifecycle surveys for:

• New hire feedback on days 30, 60, and 90
• Stay surveys after 1, 3, 5, and 10 years of tenure with your company
• Exit surveys on the employee’s last day for the employee leaving

Designing an employee lifecycle survey strategy is not something you should take on alone. First, determine the key tenure points or milestones where you want to collect employee feedback. Then, find a software provider who helps advise your listening strategy, provides research-backed templates, and integrates with your HRIS.

Lifecycle surveys, especially when they’re automated, can be easy to set and forget. That’s why it’s critical to determine who owns employee lifecycle survey analysis and to set a cadence for review – quarterly is a great place to start.

There are a few ways you can slice 'n dice your lifecycle survey data to better understand the employee experience.

• Review trending data over time: Take a step back and review your survey trends over time. How do this quarter’s results compare to last quarter’s results? What does your data look like year over year? Are there events or changes within the organization that align with these survey trends?
• Review trending data across surveys: If your employee listening strategy involves the use of other survey types, like employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys, you can start to compare trends in data across all of your survey types. You might find that your lifecycle surveys combined with your engagement surveys are showcasing a need for more career growth and development, for example.
• Utilize demographics: The benefit to utilizing a survey software is that your data isn’t just going to live in a silo. You can start to segment your employee lifecycle data by microculture including job function, department, age, gender, race, and more.

Free survey tools can give you some of the flexibility and reporting you need to start collecting important employee experience data.

However, larger or more complex organizations can benefit immensely from a lifecycle survey software that has best practice templates, customization options, and smart automation.

Ideally, your employee lifecycle survey platform will allow you to connect the data across your engagement, lifecycle, and pulse surveys. This will help you get a more holistic view of the employee experience — and enable you to take more meaningful action.

Capturing employee feedback at key milestones in the employee journey easily and accurately requires a partner you can rely on. For the last 20+ years, our customers have trusted us to deliver reliable expertise, technology, service and results.

We help you uncover meaning.
We're more than a survey tool. Our scientific approach to survey design, research-backed templates, personalized analysis and insights, and smart AI help you understand the meaning behind your employee lifecycle data.

We make action easy for everyone.
The real power of your employee surveys is not in the surveys themselves, but in the action you take as a result. We make deploying surveys and taking action easy for everyone — so leaders, HR, managers, and employees can all play their part in driving employee engagement.

We’re a partner you can rely on.
You’re on a journey – and we’re with you every step of the way. You can rely on our dedicated team to provide strategic guidance, ongoing coaching, timely tech support, and safe and secure practices your programs need to be successful.