The Great Resignation may have faded from the headlines, but its lessons still shape the workforce. Retention is no longer a reaction to turnover; it is a reflection of how well an organization builds connection, clarity, and belonging from the very start. According to Gallup’s 2025 Employee Retention and Attraction Report, more than half of employees remain open to new roles, even when satisfied with their current work.
The reasons they stay or go are rarely about pay – instead, they hinge on whether they feel seen, supported, and set up for success.
Four years ago, organizations scrambled to reimagine their approach to employee engagement. Many focused on improving flexibility or benefits. Yet the most profound shift came earlier in the employee journey: how people were welcomed, prepared, and connected before they even began.
The Experience Gap That Still Costs Companies
The data is sobering. SHRM research shows that nearly half of voluntary quits happen within the first year of employment. That means companies are losing people before they ever become fully productive. The culprit isn’t always burnout or compensation. More often, it’s disconnection—a failure to create meaningful early experiences that help new hires see where they belong.
Traditional onboarding focuses on compliance and checklists. Modern onboarding builds belonging. When new hires spend their first week filling out forms or waiting for logins, it signals that the company values process more than people. When they experience guided preboarding, culture introductions, and structured support, they enter day one with clarity and confidence.
Click Boarding’s own data shows that employees who preboard—those engaged between offer acceptance and their start date—are more than 80 percent more likely to show up on day one and 60 percent more likely to stay beyond year one. That small window between “yes” and “start date” is a massive predictor of long-term retention.
The New Employee Equation
Your workforce wants more than a paycheck. Gallup’s latest findings point to three universal retention drivers: connection, development, and purpose.
Employees are asking different questions now:
- Do I feel connected to the people I work with?
- Am I learning and growing?
- Does my work matter?
Harvard Business Review’s recent study reinforces this – they found promoting and developing employees before the job market heats up is one of the most effective retention strategies.
Growth does not always mean a new title; it can mean showing clear pathways, offering mentorship, or empowering employees to see how their work ladders up to organizational success.
Designing Workforces by Design, Not Default
Deloitte Digital’s Workforce Experience by Design research calls for companies to architect every touchpoint of the employee journey intentionally. Human experience design, when applied to HR, transforms fragmented systems into meaningful, connected experiences. It integrates technology, culture, and care into every stage … and this ranges from preboarding through offboarding.
Your ideal workforce is built one new hire at a time, but their experience begins before they’ve started.
Related: Click Boarding helps with preboarding through offboarding!
Take Onboarding to Belonging
It’ll never be a C-Suite KPI, but “belonging” might as well be one. As SHRM’s recent studies show, belonging as the strongest predictor of retention … even above compensation!
Yet fewer than half of HR leaders say their onboarding processes reinforce this. Talk about a major disconnect!
The solution? Avoid grand gestures and focus on meaningful micro-moments; think about welcomes from future teammates, introductions to company culture, and early visibility into how success is measured. These are even more important for those working remotely, as many of us do.
Preboarding is the foundation. It turns anticipation into attachment. It shows the new hire that they are already part of the story, not waiting on the outside to be invited in.
What Forward-Looking Companies Are Doing
The organizations that are winning the talent game are doing a few things differently:
They engage employees immediately after offer acceptance with personalized journeys.
They integrate compliance and culture so new hires experience both efficiency and empathy.
They extend the same care through every transition—role changes, internal mobility, and even offboarding.
Retention no longer belongs solely to HR, by the way. It’s a cross-functional mandate that depends on marketing’s storytelling, IT’s enablement, leadership’s empathy, and HR’s orchestration.
This is truly a team effort. But if employees feel siloed, then the environment isn’t supporting the ideal goals.
The Road Ahead
Employee retention has become a mirror of organizational health. It reveals how well a company listens, learns, and leads through change. As Gallup concludes, retention is not about holding people back.
It’s about giving them a reason to stay.
Preboarding and onboarding are no longer HR formalities; they are the front doors to a greater sense of belonging. When companies design those moments with intention, they transform turnover risk into relationship strength.
The organizations that embrace this truth will not only keep their people longer; they will help them thrive from before day one … and every day after.
