This week's edition of Let's Talk puts the question to our panel of SME leaders and HR experts: what simple onboarding steps have actually cut new-hire turnover in their businesses?
Most turnover happens in the first 90 days, often for reasons that have little to do with the role itself, so we wanted practical, tested answers rather than theory. Here's what our experts had to say.
Let’s Talk!
Morgan Wilson, Founder and Director, creditte accountants and advisors
“When a new hire struggles, most owners decide it is a people problem. Wrong hire. Bad attitude. Not a fit.
It is usually a process problem.
The test I use is simple. If the person had to work out how to do the job by asking around, that is not their failure. That is a process nobody wrote down.
So the onboarding steps that cut turnover are the boring ones.
Write the process before they start. Not a policy manual. The actual steps for the work they will do in their first month.
Then have them rewrite it as they learn it. If they cannot follow your process well enough to document it, the process is the problem, not the person. You find that out in week two instead of month six.
And when something goes wrong in the first 90 days, ask process first. People second. Most owners do it the other way around and lose good staff for it.
Good people leave when they feel like they are failing. Usually they are just guessing.”
Claire Denut-Samuels, Global Head of HR Services, Polyglot Group
“Many organisations invest heavily in recruitment, only to lose great people within their first few months. The solution is rarely a more sophisticated onboarding platform. More often, it comes down to simple human practices.
Neuroscience tells us that our brains are wired to assess safety and belonging from day one. A new hire who feels uncertain, isolated, or overwhelmed will spend more energy managing anxiety than contributing value. Conversely, when people feel welcomed, included, and supported, they learn faster and engage more deeply.
Three simple steps make a significant difference:
First, ensure every new hire has meaningful social connections in their first week, not just a desk and a laptop.
Second, provide clarity around expectations, priorities, and what success looks like in the first 90 days. Uncertainty is a major source of stress.
Third, create regular check-ins that focus not only on tasks, but on wellbeing, confidence, and progress.
Great onboarding is not an administrative process. It is the first opportunity to build trust, create belonging, and reinforce that someone made the right decision to join your organisation. When we get the human experience right, retention often follows naturally.”
Tanya Abbey, CEO, RecruitCorp Group
“The onboarding steps that actually cut turnover start before day one. In twenty years of recruitment I have watched the same pattern play out. A candidate accepts a role because of what they were told about the culture, the manager, the day to day reality of the job. Then they turn up and none of it matches. That gap is where new hires quietly check out, often within the first fortnight.
The simplest fix costs nothing. Whatever was promised during the hiring process needs to show up in the first week, in the same words. If flexibility was discussed, offer it early. If the manager was described as hands on, make sure that manager is actually in the room. If the role was pitched as varied, do not hand someone the same repetitive task for a month.
New hires are not comparing your onboarding to a checklist. They are comparing it to the conversation that got them to say yes. Close that gap and retention takes care of itself.”
Damien Gooden, Group CEO, HR Central
“People rarely leave a job because their employment contract was poorly explained. They leave because they never felt connected, supported or set up for success.
The businesses that retain new hires well tend to get the basics right. They prepare before the employee arrives, introduce them properly to the team, provide clear expectations and check in regularly throughout the first few months. After all, no one wants to arrive on day one only to find their computer isn’t ready, their workspace hasn’t been set up or nobody knows they’re starting.
One simple practice I recommend is giving every new starter a clear roadmap for their first 90 days. It removes uncertainty and helps them understand where they fit, what success looks like and how they’ll contribute.
Another is ensuring leaders schedule specific times for genuine conversations, not just task updates. A simple “How’s it going?” can uncover valuable insights that might otherwise be missed. It also creates an opportunity to identify and address concerns before they become bigger issues.
Great onboarding isn’t about thick manuals or fancy systems. It’s about helping people feel confident they’ve joined the right organisation and made the right career move.”
Pam McKean, Director, AB Health Group
“Why do some new hires leave within their first few months?
Often, it isn’t because they lack the ability to do the job; it’s because the welcome, direction or support they expected never arrived.
Good onboarding doesn’t need to be complicated. Start before day one with an email explaining where to go, what to bring and what their first week will look like. Make sure their desk, systems and logins are ready. Nothing makes someone feel like an afterthought faster than nobody knowing they are starting.
Assign one person they can go to with questions. Set clear expectations, but don’t overload them with every process immediately. Give them time to observe, learn and understand how the team works.
Most importantly, check in. Ask how they are settling in after day one, at the end of week one, and again at 30, 45 and 60 days. Don’t just ask whether they understand the role. Ask whether they feel supported, included and confident speaking up.
People rarely leave because the induction checklist was missing a box. They leave when they feel disconnected or uncertain.
A thoughtful welcome costs little, but it can make the difference between filling a vacancy and retaining talent.”
Michael Russell, Managing Director, Finwave Finance
“Most onboarding programmes are designed around the business’s convenience, not the new hire’s experience. They cover compliance, system access, and policies nobody reads. What they rarely cover is the thing that most directly predicts whether someone stays: whether they feel like they made the right decision in their first thirty days.
Most people who leave in the first six months made the decision to leave in the first six weeks. The trigger is almost never pay. It is disconnection. They could not see how their role mattered, they did not feel welcomed, or the reality of the job did not match what they were told during hiring.
The fixes are not complicated. Assign one person, not a handbook, as their primary contact for the first month. Schedule a genuine check-in at day seven, not to assess performance, but to ask what has surprised them and what they need. Give them a meaningful piece of work in week one. People need to feel useful early.
The step most businesses skip is a thirty-day honest conversation. Ask directly whether the role is what they expected. That question surfaces problems while there is still time to address them, rather than discovering them in a resignation letter.
Onboarding ends when the person stops feeling like a new hire.
Most programmes end on day one.”
Tiffany English, CEO, Access Offshoring
“First impressions start before a new hire walks through the door. Always ensure tech is set up, the team is introduced, and a welcome pack is provided before day one. If you assign a peer buddy rather than just a direct manager, this removes the fear of asking ‘dumb’ questions and accelerates cultural integration.
New hires need to know exactly what success looks like immediately. Vague expectations breed anxiety, and anxiety guarantees turnover. Check in at week one AND week three because most people decide whether to stay within the first 30 days. Proactive check-ins catch problems before they become resignations. This way, you can catch friction before it becomes a resignation.
Most importantly, make the “why” clear from the beginning by connecting their role directly to the company mission. People stay when they know their work genuinely matters.
Above all, never dump everything at once. Staggering onboarding over 90 days beats a two-day information dump every time. The core objective is building confidence, which always comes from competence. The quicker you get them to demonstrate competence in two to three tasks, the quicker their confidence builds and the easier it is to assign more tasks in the future.”
Mollie Eckersley, Associate Director of Operations, ANZ, BrightHR
“First impressions can dictate employee longevity. High new-hire turnover is rarely a failure of talent; it is a failure of transition. Small businesses can easily secure early retention by focusing on three low-cost, high-impact onboarding steps.
First, standardise digital contract and policy sign-off before day one. Using cloud-based HR systems like ours to manage compliant onboarding documentation takes the administrative anxiety out of the onboarding process. A new hire should spend their first morning engaging with their new team, not drowning in paperwork.
Second, integrate bite-sized eLearning early. Structured, self-paced training modules build confidence quickly, ensuring staff feel competent in their roles and supported in their professional growth from the outset.
Finally, establish absolute compliance clarity. Misunderstandings around award rates, classifications, or performance metrics breed early resentment. Aligning employees with transparent digital workflows that track compliance milestones from day one ensures a culture of consistency and fairness.
By replacing disjointed, manual processes with structured digital systems, small- to medium-sized businesses can transform a chaotic first week into a powerful tool for long-term talent retention.”
Helen Tran, Head of P&C, Business Partnering, ELMO Software
“ELMO Software’s 2026 HR Industry Benchmark Report revealed 9% of Australian workers depart during probation, while average time to productivity is 44 days. Here are five tried and tested steps we use at ELMO to reduce new-hire turnover:
Set clear expectations: Prepare everything before day one and give new hires clarity on their role, early priorities and where to go for support.
Schedule manager check-ins: Have conversations during week one and throughout probation. Use them to identify issues early, clarify priorities and provide feedback.
Build belonging quickly: Introduce the person to their team, assign a buddy, share team norms and create opportunities for informal connection.
Keep the process short and role-relevant: Remove duplicate paperwork and avoid overwhelming new hires with dozens of tasks. One ELMO example reduced onboarding from 102 steps to 30 and cut new-starter emails by 65%.
Measure the first 90 days: Track probation turnover, onboarding completion, time to productivity and 30-day feedback. Breaking results down by manager, role and hiring source helps identify where onboarding needs attention.
And if you only do three things: prepare everything before day one, make the manager accountable for regular check-ins, and give the new hire clear early expectations.”
Beth Hall, Workplace Culture Expert and Founder, Culture Edge
“Onboarding is a cultural experience, not an induction process. In the first few weeks, new hires are testing whether the role, team and culture they were sold during recruitment match what they experience.
One strategy is to protect manager time in the first week. Teams may be desperate for a new hire to start producing, but regular check-ins help people understand expectations, ask questions and build confidence.
Connections should be purposeful. Many organisations fill a new hire’s diary with coffee catch-ups, without explaining why those people matter, how they will work together or what context they should seek from them.
Managers should re-contract the role when the person arrives. Roles often shift while a vacancy is open as others absorb responsibilities, meaning a new hire can walk into a different job to the one described at interview.
Context matters too. New employees notice tensions, behaviours and ways of working without knowing the history behind them. Without context, they will create their own explanations, and those explanations shape how they feel about the culture.
Ultimately, new hires are asking three questions: Is this the job I was promised? Can I succeed here? Do I belong here? Good onboarding should help them answer yes to all three.”
Steve Evans, CEO, ConnectOS
“Organisations continue to navigate a challenging operating environment where talent shortages, rising labour costs and increasing pressure to improve productivity persist. As businesses look for ways to build capability, access to skilled talent has become a critical strategic priority.
The question CEOs, boards and business leaders should now be asking is whether we have become too focused on finding talent and not focused enough on building capability.
The findings from the ConnectOS State of Offshoring Report suggest that is exactly where the conversation needs to shift.
The report found that 60% of employers took between 30 and 60 days to fill critical roles before turning to offshore staffing. More importantly, the consequences of those shortages were already being felt. One in three businesses reported reduced service quality because they could not secure the people they needed, 32% lost customers, 31% missed project deadlines, 27% lost or delayed contracts and 26% declined new business opportunities altogether.
These are not recruitment metrics. They are measures of business performance.
Capability is developed in many ways. It comes from attracting skilled people, but it also comes from retaining experienced employees, investing in learning, embracing technology responsibly, strengthening leadership, protecting institutional knowledge and ensuring businesses have access to specialist expertise when local supply cannot meet demand.
New employees need clarity around their role. Give them a clear point of contact, introduce them properly to the people they will work with, establish regular manager check-ins and make access to systems, training and information seamless from the outset.
For businesses with distributed or offshore teams, the same principle applies. Don’t onboard people as a separate workforce. Bring them into company communications and upskilling opportunities from the beginning.”