How To Nail Your New Employee Training

Why new employee training matters

A staggering 20% of workers in the U.S. leave within 45 days of starting a new job.

In retail, the problem is even worse with half of workers leaving before the 45 day mark.

Not only is this terrible for morale (who wants to see that new joiner you desperately need leave before 2 months) but replacing them costs a lot - about 16% of salary for lower earners and over 20% for higher earners.

This is a monumental challenge that all businesses need to overcome to be successful and survive.

The good news is the answer is simple: nail your onboarding flow.

The stats back it up: 91% of employees stay at least a year when onboarding is done well and a whopping 69% stay three years.

The cost of bad new employee training

First, let’s really hammer home what the problem is.

A stunningly low 12% of employees think their onboarding was “good”. That is a catastrophic failure on the part of businesses to not only prepare their employees, but also to safeguard their business metrics. Bad onboarding delays productivity, lowers morale, and makes people leave.

39% of people who quit in the first six months say better training could have kept them. So how do you make this happen?

What good onboarding looks like

If I could give one piece of advice to boost your new employee training: it would be to start before day one.

Update your standard operating procedures (SOPs), make a training plan, and set up a checklist. By the time the new employee joins, you should be able to kick into a fully-fledged onboarding flow, without having to update anything.

If this feels like a lot of work, use tools to make things easy. Check out Colossyan’s range of onboarding video templates if you’re looking for inspiration.

Another hack is to give new employees a mentor or buddy for their training. High-performing companies are 2.5 times more likely to do this, and it gives a new employee a way to ask questions about edge-cases as well as integrate into the real culture of the business.

Keep training going

Onboarding should be an on-ramp that introduces your new employees to the learning culture of the team, rather than something that only takes place for the first few months of an employee’s journey.

I recently discovered that only 4% of employers train beyond 30 days. But as anyone could tell you, real mastery often starts after the first month in post. 

Most companies give up way too early on training, seeing it as a short term solution, but 76% of workers say they are more likely to stay in a role if they have ongoing training.

When designing your new employee training, consider what to do once the traditional ‘onboarding’ phase is complete, what learning pathways you want to open up, and how you want to carry on training your new employees.

Use the right tools for training new employees

There has never been a better time to create a compelling onboarding experience. L&D teams have access to a plethora of features that can create content in the blink of an eye (don’t believe me? Create a free video with Colossyan today).

If I was starting an onboarding tech stack from scratch today, this is what I’d pick:

• Video creation: Colossyan – either via video templates or with the video API to create custom videos for each new joiner.
  
  
• LMS: Thrive – an AI-native LMS with skills management, compliance tracking, and engaging learning tools.
  
  
• Knowledge base: Notion or Confluence – a single place for SOPs, FAQs, and process docs so new hires can find answers fast.
  
  
• Checklists & workflows: Asana or Trello – create pre-boarding and onboarding task lists for both managers and new hires.
  
  
• Buddy program matching: Donut (Slack integration) – pairs new hires with buddies for faster cultural integration.
  
  
• Feedback collection: Typeform or Google Forms – quick pulse surveys after each stage of onboarding to find and fix issues early.

The payoff of creating best-in-class new employee training

Onboarding affects almost every aspect of a business. Strong onboarding can increase team productivity by 70% and it can raise profit margins by 24%.

In terms of satisfaction rates: 70% of people with great onboarding say they have the best job possible.

Given that nailing new employee training could lead to more money, more happiness and more retention, this should be considered absolutely business critical for every single business.

Final thoughts

Training is not a one-time event. You need to ensure you are approaching onboarding as an on-ramp, rather than a hurdle. 

Start early with your preparation, and treat it as a number one priority from an executive level down.

The results are clear: better work, happier teams, and people who stay.

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