The Cost of Not Getting Onboarding Right
Imagine you’re a senior engineer. You’ve just joined a new company, excited to make an impact. But instead of hitting the ground running, you find yourself confused. You don’t know who to ask for help. You don’t fully understand your role. You’re not sure how your work fits into the bigger picture.
So you get frustrated. You make mistakes. And eventually, you leave.
This isn’t some rare scenario. It’s alarmingly common. Over 50% of senior hires fail within 18 months. Think about that for a moment. More than half of the experienced, carefully chosen people brought into organisations don’t last a year and a half.
The cost of this is staggering. Replacing a senior engineer can cost up to 200% of their annual salary. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars per failed hire. Multiply that across an engineering team, and you’re burning millions.
But the real cost is even higher. Every failed hire represents lost productivity, lost opportunities, and lost morale. It’s a drain on the entire organisation.
So why do companies keep making this expensive mistake? I think it’s because they fundamentally misunderstand what onboarding is and why it matters.
Most companies think onboarding is about logistics — making sure a new hire has a desk, a computer, and a copy of the employee handbook. But that’s just orientation. Real onboarding is about integration. It’s about enabling a new hire to become a fully functioning, contributing member of the team.
And that takes time. It takes more than a week or even a month. It’s an ongoing process of learning, connecting, and acclimatising to a new environment.
Think of it this way: when you hire someone, you’re essentially placing a bet. You’re betting that this person will create more value for your company than they cost. But that bet doesn’t pay off on day one. It pays off over time, as the employee learns, grows, and contributes.
Onboarding is how you stack the odds in your favour. It’s how you accelerate the timeline from hire to value creation.
Some companies get this. They recognise that onboarding is a strategic priority, not an administrative afterthought. They invest in structured programs, dedicated resources, and ongoing support for new hires.
And it pays off. Research shows that strong onboarding can improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
But for every company that gets it right, there are dozens that get it wrong. They treat onboarding as a checkbox, a one-time event, a necessary evil. And then they wonder why their hiring never seems to stick.
If you’re a leader, and you’re not thinking deeply about how you integrate new people into your organisation, you’re making a costly mistake. You’re leaving value on the table. You’re handicapping your team’s ability to perform. And you’re setting yourself up for a lot of expensive failures.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in onboarding. It’s whether you can afford not to. Because while onboarding might seem like a small thing, it has a big impact. It’s a force multiplier for everything else you do with your people.
And in the end, your people are your most important asset. How you set them up for success — or failure — is one of the most important things you’ll do as a leader.
So if you’re serious about building a high-performing organisation, it’s time to get serious about onboarding. It’s time to stop treating it as an afterthought and start treating it as the strategic priority it is.
Because when you get onboarding right, you’re not just setting up your new hires for success. You’re setting up your entire company for success. And that’s worth doing well.
