Onboarding Buddy Feedback Survey

Use it if you run a buddy or peer-mentor program for new hires and want feedback from the person being onboarded. It is especially useful for HR, People Ops, onboarding program owners, and managers who need to compare buddy effectiveness across cohorts. The survey is designed for the new hire, not the buddy, so it captures the recipient’s experience of support, clarity, and belonging.

Send it after the new hire has had enough time to interact with the buddy, usually near the end of the first few weeks or after the first month. If you send it too early, respondents may not have enough exposure to judge responsiveness, practical support, or cultural guidance. If you want trend data, keep the cadence consistent across cohorts so results are comparable.

This template isolates the buddy relationship itself, rather than blending it into broader onboarding sentiment. It measures buddy availability, practical help, cultural integration, match quality, and whether the buddy accelerated belonging. That makes it easier to tell whether onboarding friction comes from the buddy program or from other parts of the onboarding process.

Yes, anonymity should be the default for employee surveys unless there is a clear reason not to use it. New hires are more likely to give honest feedback about a buddy’s responsiveness, usefulness, or fit when they know their answers are protected. If you need identifiable follow-up, separate the feedback form from any optional contact request.

Keep it short enough to respect a new hire’s time while still covering the core engagement drivers of the buddy experience. This template focuses on a small set of rating questions with targeted follow-ups for low scores, plus one open-ended wrap-up. That structure gives you actionable feedback without creating survey fatigue during onboarding.

Use a 5-point Likert scale with clear semantic anchors such as Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. That format is easier to interpret than raw numbers and works well for questions about responsiveness, helpfulness, and belonging. For the overall value question, the 0–10 eNPS-style scale in the template can help you separate promoters, passives, and detractors of the buddy program.

A common mistake is asking only positive questions and skipping follow-ups when someone rates an item low. Another is collecting demographics before the feedback questions, which can reduce trust and make anonymity feel less real. It also helps to avoid overloading the survey with too many sections, because the goal is to learn whether the buddy relationship improved onboarding, not to turn the survey into a general employee census.

Yes. You can tailor the wording for remote, hybrid, or in-office onboarding, and you can adjust examples of tools, workflows, or internal resources to match your environment. If some roles need more technical support and others need more cultural guidance, you can emphasize the relevant items without changing the core structure.

Review the low-scoring items first, especially the open-ended follow-ups attached to ratings of 3 or below. Those responses usually reveal whether the issue is buddy availability, unclear expectations, poor matching, or a need for better guidance. Use the findings to improve buddy selection, meeting cadence, onboarding materials, and manager coordination for the next cohort.

Ad hoc conversations are useful, but they are hard to compare across cohorts and often miss quiet dissatisfaction. A structured survey gives you consistent data on the same engagement drivers every time, which makes it easier to spot patterns in response rate, match quality, and perceived belonging. It also creates a repeatable record you can use to refine the program over time.