How to Onboard New Employees So They Actually Stay
I’m Chris Dyer. I’ve built companies, written books, and delivered hundreds of keynotes on leadership and culture. And I can tell you that the single highest-leverage investment most organizations never make is in the first day of employment.
At my company PeopleG2, we used to onboard new employees the way most organizations do: paperwork, a desk, and hope. First-year turnover was 35 percent. Then we redesigned onboarding completely. Turnover dropped to 12 percent. The investment was roughly $500 per new hire. The return was $135,000 in savings the first year alone.
This article shares what we learned and what the research says about why beginnings matter so much. If you’re losing new hires in their first year, the problem probably isn’t your people. It’s how you’re starting them.
Table of Contents
- Why First Days Matter More Than You Think
- What Most Companies Get Wrong
- The Science of First Impressions
- How We Redesigned Onboarding at PeopleG2
- The ROI of Getting It Right
- Building Your Own Inception Experience
- FAQ
Why First Days Matter More Than You Think
In my upcoming book Moments That Matter, I introduce a concept called “inception moments.” These are the beginnings that shape everything that follows. A new employee’s first day is the most important inception moment in their entire tenure with your organization.
Here’s why: on day one, new hires are more excited, more impressionable, and more ready to believe in what you’re building than they will ever be again. They’ve just made a major life decision. They’ve told friends and family about their new job. They’re primed to fall in love with your company.
And most organizations waste this moment completely. They hand new employees a stack of forms, point them to a desk, and disappear. By the end of that first day, the new hire has already begun to question whether they made the right choice.
The research backs this up. Organizations with strong onboarding processes improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. Yet only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding.
What Most Companies Get Wrong
They confuse compliance with connection. Most onboarding programs are built around what the company needs: completed forms, signed policies, mandatory training modules. None of that creates belonging.
They front-load information instead of relationships. Day one dumps are common. The new hire absorbs maybe 10 percent of it. What they remember is that nobody asked how they were feeling.
They treat onboarding as HR’s job. When onboarding is owned exclusively by HR, it becomes a process to complete rather than an experience to create.
They optimize for efficiency over impact. The employee who’s productive by week two but gone by month six cost you far more than the employee who took a month to ramp but stayed for years.
They ignore the emotional journey. New employees are nervous. Great onboarding acknowledges these emotions and addresses them directly.
The Science of First Impressions
Princeton researchers Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov showed participants photographs of faces for different lengths of time: 100 milliseconds, 500 milliseconds, a full second. The judgments made after 100 milliseconds correlated almost perfectly with judgments made given unlimited time. One-tenth of a second. Less time than it takes to blink.
What this means for onboarding: by the time a new employee has walked from the lobby to their desk, hundreds of micro-judgments have already been made. Everything after that first moment isn’t forming the impression. It’s confirming or defending against what’s already been decided.
How We Redesigned Onboarding at PeopleG2
We moved paperwork before day one
All the compliance stuff got sent in advance. We paid new hires for the time it took to complete this at home. Their actual first day would be about connection, not paperwork.
We created welcome packages that showed we paid attention
During the interview process, we’d ask casual questions about preferences. Then we’d send a welcome package filled with personalized items. One person mentioned loving Swedish Fish during their interview. Guess what was in their welcome package? Sometimes we’d send a giant fortune cookie with a custom message inside.
I met with every new hire personally
Within their first two days, every new employee had a thirty-minute culture training session with me, the CEO. I’d tell them: “I need you to be my eyes and ears. If what you see happening doesn’t match what I’m telling you right now, I need to know immediately.”
We treated the first day as a moment, not a process
The goal wasn’t to get them up to speed. The goal was to make them feel like they belonged, like they’d made the right choice, like this company was different from anywhere they’d worked before.
The ROI of Getting It Right
Before we redesigned onboarding, first-year turnover was 35 percent. With forty employees, we were losing about fourteen people per year. Each departure cost roughly $15,000 in recruiting, training, and lost productivity. That’s $210,000 annually in turnover costs.
After the redesign, turnover dropped to 12 percent. We went from losing fourteen people to losing five. That’s nine fewer departures, saving $135,000 in year one alone. The investment was maybe $20,000 total. That’s a 675 percent ROI.
The real economics go deeper. An employee who has an amazing first day tells people about it. They become recruiters before they’ve finished their first week. Our cost per hire dropped 40 percent because employees were sending us qualified candidates.
Building Your Own Inception Experience
Audit your current first day
Go through your onboarding process as if you were a new hire. Would you feel welcomed or processed? Be honest. Most leaders who do this exercise are horrified by what they find.
Move compliance before day one
Anything that doesn’t require being in the building should happen before day one. Free up their actual first day for what matters.
Design the welcome moment
A welcome sign with their name. A card signed by the team. Their favorite coffee waiting at their desk. These cost almost nothing but signal everything.
Create meaningful human connection
New employees need to meet real people on day one, not just watch training videos. The goal is for them to end day one knowing actual humans who work there.
Have a senior leader invest time
At PeopleG2, I met with every new hire personally. This signals that new employees matter.
Check in early and often
The first week, check in daily. The first month, check in weekly. Most new hires won’t volunteer concerns unprompted. You have to ask.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the first day of a new job so important?
The first day is when new employees are most impressionable. Research shows impressions form in milliseconds and persist over time. A strong first day builds commitment. A weak first day plants seeds of doubt that grow into turnover.
What’s the ROI of better onboarding?
At PeopleG2, redesigning onboarding delivered a 675 percent ROI in the first year through reduced turnover alone. Industry research shows strong onboarding improves retention by 82 percent.
What does Chris Dyer speak about regarding onboarding?
Chris Dyer’s Moments That Matter keynote teaches leaders about inception moments, including the critical importance of how employees begin their journey with an organization.
How do you make new employees feel welcome?
Personalization matters more than budget. Learn something about them during the interview and reference it on day one. Have their workspace ready. Greet them personally. Small touches that show you were expecting them specifically signal that they matter.
The Moment That Sets the Tone
Your new employee’s first day isn’t just a day. It’s a signal. Get it wrong, and you’ll spend their entire tenure fighting the impression you created in those first eight hours. Get it right, and you’ll have an employee who’s committed before they’ve completed their first project.
If you want to learn more about inception moments, my Moments That Matter keynote gives leaders a complete framework for identifying and designing the moments that matter most.
Visit chrisdyer.com to learn more.
