40% of Your New Hires Are Job Hunting Again. Here's Why

You don’t have a hiring problem. You have an on-boarding problem. And it’s burning your time and your money every year.

Most companies think they have an on-boarding process. In reality, they have:

1. IT setup and paperwork

2. Follow some standard training that could've been a PDF

3. Office tour and maybe some lunch

4. "Figure it out as you go"

Result? New hires feel abandoned and start job hunting within weeks

Here’s the truth: poor on-boarding is one of the fastest ways to lose good people. SHRM reports that up to 50% of hourly workers and 40% of senior hires leave within 18 months-most because expectations from the interviews not meeting reality and not feeling supported in those critical first weeks. Gallup adds that only 12% of employees strongly agree their company does on-boarding well.

That failure is expensive, replacing an employee costs 20%–200% of annual salary, depending on the seniority and role. So for a 50-person company, losing just 5 new hires each year can quietly drain hundreds of thousands in recruiting spend, lost productivity, and team disruption.

The mistake? Treating on-boarding as administration, not integration.

What works instead is a structured 90-day integration system:

• Week 1: Foundation= A clear 30-60-90 plan, role expectations, and a peer buddy (not the manager).

• Weeks 2-4: Connection= Introductions with stakeholders, shadowing sessions, and an early-win project to build confidence.

• Month 2: Contribution= Real responsibility, cross-functional collaboration, and ongoing feedback.

• Month 3: Integration= Autonomy, goal alignment, and a forward-looking development plan.

When companies shift from “orientation” to integration, the results show: Harvard Business Review notes that organizations with a formal on-boarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.

Your hiring process may bring people in the door. But only great on-boarding keeps them, and gets them producing faster.

At TalentLab, we helped scaling businesses cut time-to-productivity in half and push 90-day retention above 90% with our 30-60-90 On-boarding playbook.

If you’re hiring but struggling to keep talent engaged;

• it’s not a recruiting problem.

• It’s an on-boarding problem.

What’s your biggest on-boarding challenge right now? Drop a comment, or reach out to me via Bravo Advisors to get more advice.