Why Engaged Employees Stay Longer (And How Onboarding Sets the Tone)
88% of employees feel extremely engaged with their jobs, according to a 2025 Workforce Trends Report. This may sound like great news for employers, but the underlying reasons reveal a different story.
67% of these employees say a tighter job market increases their engagement, while 61% cite job insecurity as a key motivator. Their reasons for performing well and remaining in these roles are based on current market conditions, not long-term emotional investment in their companies.
Employee engagement goes beyond job satisfaction. It also measures how enthusiastic employees are about their work and the level of connection they feel to the organisation. Since employees are the backbone of any company and their daily actions can make or break an organisation’s success, engagement is incredibly important.
Increasing engagement isn’t just about implementing measures to prevent turnover. It’s also about creating a workplace with processes that make employees want to stay. This begins with a good onboarding experience, setting the scene for a fulfilling career that helps employees thrive. Keep reading to discover how.
Why Does Engagement Impact Retention?
Highly engaged employees feel more connected to their workplace culture and are 87% less likely to leave. Being emotionally committed to both their role and the organisation means they feel happy and motivated, and therefore want to stay in a place where they feel comfortable.
Some other benefits of high employee engagement include:
Better Performance
A strong working connection means employees are more involved in the business’s aims and mission. This shared purpose allows them to work well as a team to meet these goals and develop meaningful relationships in the process.
The result? Organisations with engaged workforces have 78% less absenteeism. They also achieve 14% higher productivity and 10% higher customer loyalty, with employees who are more likely to go above and beyond their role’s expectations.
In industries like retail and hospitality, this translates to high sales and profits. For health and aged care, organisations can enjoy great patient outcomes and a higher quality of life for residents.
Higher Resilience
Gallup studies show that engaged employees have 70% higher well-being. They’re more resilient under pressure and mentally prepared for change, seeing busier periods or new HR tech as positive steps rather than threats.
Engaged employees often want to help implement these changes and stay to see their impact.
Improved Reputation
Alongside improving retention rates, having a highly engaged workforce can also make your organisation more attractive to other job seekers. Employees with a strong connection to their workplace culture are six times more likely to recommend the company to others!
This helps you gain a reputation as an excellent employer, meaning you’ll likely receive more applications and build an even more committed workforce.
Can Disengagement Lower Retention Rates?
On the flip side, disengaged employees are less invested in their work and less likely to stay long-term, causing retention rates to fall. Simply going through the motions of the job and not feeling committed to the company translates to $7 trillion in lost productivity worldwide!
With 49% of global workers reporting high levels of daily work stress, this lack of engagement may be due to burnout or dissatisfaction with the work culture.
However, for employees who feel disengaged from the start, a poor onboarding process that fails to fully integrate them into the team is a key culprit.
How Does Seamless Onboarding Boost Employee Engagement?
Seamless onboarding makes a good first impression and ensures employees feel valued from their first day. Rather than a one-off exercise to boost satisfaction rates before a survey or recruitment drive, good onboarding programs build a long-term culture of engagement across the entire organisation, from top to bottom.
One reason for this is integration. Onboarding immediately integrates new hires into the company culture, helping them feel supported and confident in their new roles. A great example is Billabong, which transformed its new hire onboarding process with Onboard Express.
Billabong’s HR team used the purpose-built platform to build a highly personalised employee onboarding experience. This allowed new hires to learn about the brand before they started, helping them understand the business and its working culture.
Seamless onboarding also ensures new hires feel valued. Offering easy-to-follow training and development programs from the very start shows that you care about employee career progression, investing in them both as workers and valuable assets to the organisation.
With 70% of employees surveyed by McKinsey saying that their work largely defines their sense of purpose, companies that take this approach are therefore much more likely to see high engagement than those focused solely on compensation.
How to Create an Engaging Onboarding Experience
Building an engaging onboarding experience involves streamlining tedious manual processes and freeing up time to truly connect with new employees.
Global employee engagement rates fell to 21% last year, which is only the second decline in engagement within the past 12 years. Here are three ways to improve these figures:
1. Measure Employee Engagement
You’ll need to know how engaged your new hires are before improving the onboarding experience. And if they’re disengaged, find out why. However, according to a survey of 600 CEOs and presidents, only 22% of companies currently know what drives employee disengagement.
Don’t leave it until the exit survey to find out what went wrong. Monitor well-being with regular engagement surveys, which provide confidential, judgement-free spaces for employees to voice concerns. Track key metrics like productivity and satisfaction rates to identify at which point during the candidate journey you’re losing employees:
- Application Stage: Create shorter application forms with fewer clicks.
- Between Interview and Offer: Improve your communication processes.
- Onboarding: Make the process faster and more engaging!
2. Streamline Onboarding Processes
Leaving new hires waiting after the offer acceptance creates a poor first impression of your company and can cause them to begin looking elsewhere. It’s no wonder 30% of employees leave within the first 90 days!
Instead, implement fast, effective communication streams to build trust and commitment from the beginning. One of the most effective ways to do this is with purpose-built onboarding software, which speeds up the entire process.
Onboard Express, for instance, reduces onboarding time from as long as 2 weeks to just 2 days with the following features:
- Automated Tools: Reduce the admin burden for both HR employees and new hires with customisable pre-made contract templates that auto-fill key details. Instant pre-employment checks maintain compliance, while online approvals and e-signatures ensure faster day-one readiness.
- Personalised Notifications: Celebrate milestones, like finishing onboarding documents or training modules, by sending notifications straight to employees’ personalised onboarding portals. A Gallup and Workhuman joint study found that workers who receive high-quality recognition are 45% less likely to leave their jobs after two years!
- Mobile Workflows: 79% of survey respondents said they would be more loyal to their employer if flexible work were an option. Mobile-first onboarding means employees don’t need to be on-site to get all essential documents signed and approved. Instead, contracts and offer letters can be sent and completed anywhere to boost engagement from day one.
- Online Training: Deliver personalised professional growth programs easily through each new hire’s online portal. Track their progress to ensure employees have the skills and knowledge needed to start their new role.
3. Focus on Fun Onboarding
Eliminating the admin burden means more time to spend on the onboarding activities that really engage employees.
Integrate anything from team-building activities that introduce new hires and longer-serving colleagues to themed onboarding weeks for high-volume recruitment drives into your program. Continue these activities beyond onboarding through monthly team lunches or social events that celebrate big milestones.
These activities create a culture of positive collaboration from the start of the candidate experience, where employees feel valued for their contributions to the team.
Boost Retention and Build Engagement with Onboard Express
Engaged employees stay longer if they have reasons to commit to your company long-term.
Show they have a bright future by investing in training and development and maintaining strong, consistent communication. And for the best results, from higher productivity to more innovation, provide these reasons from the beginning of their journey, during the onboarding phase.
At Onboard Express, our comprehensive onboarding software ensures employees stay at your organisation and thrive. Book a demo today to see how we can help you boost retention and set the tone for more engaging onboarding experiences.