Hiring teams optimize relentlessly for time-to-fill, then hand off to managers and walk away. The result: ~30% of new hires leave within 12 months on the industry average. The cost is enormous — the SHRM benchmark puts the fully-loaded cost of replacement at 1.5–2× annual salary.
Most attrition isn't a hiring miss; it's an onboarding miss. The new hire arrives, gets their laptop, gets ghosted by their manager for a week, doesn't have a clear 30-day goal — and starts looking. By month 6, they're gone. Fix onboarding and you fix half of attrition.
Day 1: laptop, accounts, lunch with the manager, intro to the team, day-1 'small win' shipped (a config change, a meeting attended, a doc reviewed). Sounds basic. Most teams don't ship it.
30 days: explicit 30-day goal set with the manager. Pulse survey on integration and clarity. Buddy check-in. Small project owned end-to-end.
60 days: first peer feedback round, scoped 60-day project shipped. New hire owns one team ritual or process documentation update.
90 days: formal performance review, explicit 6-month goals, retention conversation if any signals are weak. By day 90, the new hire should be net-additive to the team and clear on their trajectory.
