Almost half of workers would quit or cut hours over poor healthcare
How to lose an employee in seven months
In the film ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’, the whole premise is a deliberate mission to drive someone away as fast as possible, complete with over-the-top antics and an infamous “Love Fern.” But in the real world, businesses don’t need a rom-com plot to lose new hires; they just accidentally let the settling in process drag on for way too long. They just don’t realise it.
We surveyed 1,000 UK adults and found it takes an average of 7.3 months to feel fully settled and productive in a role. That’s more than half a year for employees to find their feet. Here’s how it can go wrong.
Month one: the honeymoon phase
Recruitment costs a business a lot of time and effort. Advertising roles, conducting interviews, you know how it goes. And as soon as the right candidate receives and accepts the job offer, celebrations are due. But getting someone through the door is only the beginning. Those first few months are critical to retaining an employee.
Too often, onboarding amounts to only a laptop, a login, a safety induction and an office tour, plus the ‘shout me if you need anything’ comment.
When you say it out loud, it’s obvious it’s not enough. But many organisations still think it is. The same survey found that one in ten had seriously considered leaving a job within their first month.
The fix is simple. As soon as they accept the offer, trigger a checklist, get the ball rolling, and make them feel stable. Contracts, right-to-work checks, payroll details: all of it can be sorted before the start date. Among 25 to 34 year olds, 16% said their onboarding experience had negatively affected how they viewed their employer. Onboarding is an HR and employer brand issue.
Month two: the questions start piling up
By now, our new starter is asking the same things over and over. Where do I find what I need? Who approves this? Which system do I use? Who do I speak to when I get stuck?
When the answers are hard to find, it creates friction at exactly the point when someone is trying to build confidence in a new role. Managers feel it too. Every unanswered question becomes a tap on the shoulder, and the time that takes adds up.
Create a buddy system across the business, matching up each new employee with a current one. This routes requests to the right person, saving the new starter from guessing and the anxiety that comes with it. It also stops managers fielding the same questions every time someone new joins.
Month three: the decider
From our survey, we found that 9% left a role within their first three months. Onboarding and support shouldn’t stop after the first week. Businesses often do exactly that. Workload takes over, and questions turn into inconveniences, tainting the new hire’s experience. Some never even get a proper welcome in the first place. 12% said they received little to no formal training for their role, and 9% said they received no formal onboarding at all.
Managers need clear visibility over what training people have completed, what is outstanding and where people might need more support. That lets you spot a struggling starter in week three rather than month three. An all in one platform that brings learning and HR together can solve this, with a live matrix across every employee, role, team and site. A clear audit trail ready in seconds and connected to employee records helps managers stay on top of onboarding and development. It keeps the employee experience smooth, whether you’re one month or one year into the job.
Months four to six: feeling lost
Most organisations haven’t deliberately created complicated processes. They’ve simply added different systems over time, with spreadsheets, emails and manual work filling the gaps between them. HR information sits in one system, payroll in another, timesheets somewhere else, compliance tracking somewhere else, and learning on a completely separate platform. Employees are left navigating it all, and HR teams are left managing it.
HR teams feel it most. They spend huge amounts of time moving information around, answering basic questions, and checking that things are done.
An employee doesn’t experience your organisation as a collection of different software products; they experience one workplace. HR, payroll, timesheets and learning in one place means fewer logins and fewer ‘which system is this?’ moments. Use AI to take on and automate repetitive work. It can remove tedious work, make information easier to access, and give HR and managers better visibility across the workforce.
Month seven: technically settled
That 7.3 month average is the real cost. A new starter is still finding their feet, and the business is paying for a role that isn’t yet delivering at full capacity. They need support from colleagues and managers. That makes it a workforce planning problem as well as a people problem.
Learning should be part of the journey, not just assigned and completed at the start. It should be central to how an organisation continuously develops its people. And especially with compliance getting more stringent each year, add annual training modules or refresher courses, so your people feel 100% confident in their day-to-day.
The one-year mark
Nearly one in ten said it took them more than a year to feel settled, while 7% said they never felt fully settled and productive in a role at all. Onboarding can make or break employee experience. The first day matters, but so does month twelve.
The irony is that ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ ends with the couple falling madly in love despite the chaos. New starters will be less forgiving. Fix the friction, connect your systems and keep the learning going, and month seven can become the start of the relationship rather than the end.
