Employee Onboarding Statistics (2026)

Twelve percent of US employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new hires. That is Gallup's figure, and it is the only widely cited onboarding statistic that comes from a national panel. Around it sit a handful of vendor surveys with stated samples: 44% of new hires have regrets or second thoughts in the first week, 70% decide within a month whether a job is right for them, and roughly 40% of all turnover happens in the first year of employment.

Most pages on this topic are built on three figures that cannot be traced: that good onboarding improves retention by 82%, that 69% of employees stay three years after a good experience, and that 20% of turnover happens in the first 45 days. This page uses Gallup, BambooHR, Paychex, TalentLMS, Work Institute, Insight Global and BLS tenure data, states the sample and date next to every figure, and explains where the untraceable ones came from.

How good is onboarding?

Gallup's onboarding perspective paper reports that 12% of US employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding, and 29% of new hires feel fully prepared and supported to excel in their role after onboarding. Gallup does not publish the sample for those two items, which it drew from its panel around 2019, and has not updated them. They remain the only onboarding figures from a national probability panel. Gallup also estimates it takes about twelve months for a new hire to reach full performance potential, and that new hires whose managers take an active role in onboarding are 3.4 times as likely to call the experience exceptional.

Vendor surveys with stated samples give a more favorable picture because they ask about satisfaction rather than strong agreement. TalentLMS and BambooHR's 2025 survey of 1,156 US employees hired in the previous year found 73% satisfied with their onboarding overall, with hybrid hires at 75%, in-person at 73% and remote at 71%. Paychex's October 2022 survey of 1,002 recent hires found 52% satisfied. "Satisfied" and "great job" are different bars, and the 12% and 73% figures are both right about what they measure.

The first week and the first month

BambooHR's April 2023 survey of 1,565 US employees found 44% had regrets or second thoughts about their new job within the first week, and 70% decided within the first month whether the job was right for them. On average, new hires said they needed about 44 days to decide whether to stay long term. The 2025 TalentLMS and BambooHR follow-up found 39% had second thoughts in the early period, a lower figure from a different sample and question.

What new hires want is specific. In BambooHR's 2023 data, 87% wanted to make a friend at work during onboarding, 93% wanted to shadow a colleague, and the most-cited missing elements were clear expectations, a walkthrough of tools and a check-in from the manager in week one. Our onboarding checklist is built around those.

First-year turnover

No federal series measures first-year turnover. The nearest BLS figure is tenure: in January 2026, 20.6% of wage and salary workers had been with their employer 12 months or less, down from 22.2% two years earlier, per the September 2026 tenure release.

Work Institute's exit interview data put a share on it. Its 2019 Retention Report found 37.9% of employees who left did so in their first year, and 40.3% of those left within the first 90 days. Its 2024 and 2025 reports put first-year leavers at about 40% of all turnover, and its first-quarter 2026 update at 28.4%, a notable fall as the labor market cooled. The figures are from more than 14,000 exit interviews a year at client companies, which skews toward larger employers. In hospitals, NSI's 2026 report found 29.5% of new hires left within a year and first-year employees accounted for 35.6% of all turnover. Our employee turnover statistics page covers the full picture.

Training and preparedness

Paychex's 2022 survey is the clearest on the link between training and intent to stay. Among the 1,002 recent hires, 80% of those who felt undertrained said they planned to quit soon, against 7% of those who felt adequately trained. Remote workers were the most likely to feel undertrained, at 63%, and were 117% more likely to say they planned to leave. Insight Global's 2025 survey of 905 US workers found 22% had left a job within 90 days, 60% of them citing poor training or unclear expectations, and that new hires took six to seven months on average to feel settled. Eighty percent said better onboarding would have made them stay longer. Our employee training statistics page covers training spend and hours.

Remote and hybrid onboarding

The remote penalty in onboarding is consistent across surveys but smaller in the latest one. In Paychex's 2022 data, 63% of remote hires felt undertrained against about half of in-person hires. In the 2025 TalentLMS and BambooHR data, satisfaction was 71% for remote hires, 73% for in-person and 75% for hybrid, a four-point spread. Gallup's hybrid work research finds that 80% of hybrid workers have had no formal training on how to work in a hybrid arrangement, which is a gap that starts at onboarding. Our return to office statistics page covers how much of the workforce is now hybrid.

The manager and the buddy

Gallup's finding that manager involvement makes an exceptional onboarding 3.4 times as likely is the single most-cited intervention statistic, and it holds up because it comes from the same panel as the 12% figure. The buddy evidence is from Microsoft's 2019 pilot of 600 new hires: those who met their buddy once in the first 90 days were 23% more satisfied with onboarding than those with no buddy, and those who met eight or more times were 36% more satisfied. It is one company's internal data, published in Harvard Business Review, and it remains the best quantified buddy study. Our one-on-one meeting template covers the manager check-ins.

What a failed hire costs

SHRM's 2022 benchmarking put the average cost per hire at about $4,700, covering sourcing, recruiting and administrative costs, with soft costs several times higher. A hire who leaves in month three has consumed that plus onboarding time and returned little. Gallup's tiered replacement estimate is 40% of salary for frontline roles, 80% for technical roles and 200% for leaders; the evidence-based median from the Center for American Progress's 2012 review is 21% of salary. For a bedside nurse, NSI puts it at $60,090. Our employee cost calculator applies those rates to your own figures.

Figures to stop using

• "Great onboarding improves retention by 82% and productivity by 70%." From a 2015 Brandon Hall Group report based on 153 organizations' self-assessment. Routinely attributed to Glassdoor, which only republished it. Ten years old, correlational and small.
• "69% of employees are more likely to stay three years after a great onboarding experience." Traces to a 1998 Corning Glass study cited in Talya Bauer's 2010 SHRM foundation paper. Nearly thirty years old.
• "58% of organizations say their onboarding is focused on paperwork." Attributed to the Wynhurst Group; no primary document exists.
• "20% of turnover happens in the first 45 days." No traceable source. Work Institute's figure is that 40.3% of first-year leavers left within 90 days.
• "New hires are 58% more likely to stay three years with structured onboarding." Another rendering of the Corning figure.
• "Onboarding takes 90 days." Gallup's estimate is twelve months to full performance; Insight Global's respondents said six to seven months to feel settled.

Key takeaways

• 12% of US employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding, and 29% of new hires feel fully prepared after it, per Gallup. 73% report being satisfied in a 2025 vendor survey, a lower bar.
• 44% of new hires have regrets or second thoughts in the first week and 70% decide within a month whether the job is right, per BambooHR's 2023 survey of 1,565 employees.
• About 40% of all turnover happens in the first year, per Work Institute exit data, falling to 28.4% in early 2026. 22% of workers have left a job within 90 days.
• 80% of undertrained new hires plan to quit soon against 7% of adequately trained ones. 60% of those who left within 90 days cite poor training or unclear expectations.
• Remote hires are the most likely to feel undertrained, at 63% in 2022. The satisfaction gap had narrowed to four points by 2025.
• Active manager involvement makes an exceptional onboarding 3.4 times as likely. Meeting an onboarding buddy eight or more times raised satisfaction 36% in Microsoft's 600-person pilot.
• Average cost per hire is about $4,700 before onboarding time. Replacement costs run 21% of salary at the median and up to 200% for leaders.
• The '82% retention improvement' and '69% stay three years' figures are from 2015 and 1998 respectively and should be retired.