An Onboarding Self-Assessment
How does your agency approach onboarding? And how effective is that approach? If you’re uncertain about what is working, you and your colleagues can use this tool to assess the strengths and opportunities to improve your agencies’ onboarding process. Through guided questions, you'll examine your existing onboarding materials, gather feedback from new hires about their experiences, and consider supervisors’ experiences with new employees. Bring a diverse team of agency staff together to have this conversation. It can help you identify where to invest in training resources and supports to ensure new hires succeed in your child welfare agency.
The QIC-WA has created the Workforce Conversation Guides to help agencies self-assess their strategies throughout the employee lifecycle. The questions in this guide provide a starting point for conducting a thorough needs assessment of your onboarding process. They can help you identify onboarding practices that may benefit from data visualization, targeted interventions, or additional review with a workforce expert. The onboarding guide is intended to be used after assessing your selection process and before assessing your training practices.
Bauer, T. N., Erdogan, B., Ellis, A. M., Truxillo, D. M., Brady, G. M., & Bodner, T. (2024). New Horizons for Newcomer Organizational Socialization: A Review, Meta-Analysis, and Future Research Directions. Journal of Management, 51(1), 344-382. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063241277168 (Original work published 2025)