The first months: what new starters tell us.

The data comes from OnBoarder, our new-starter questionnaire, completed by 3,281 people at 15 UK organisations: 7 in the private sector, 5 NHS trusts and 3 in the public sector, education and not-for-profit. Each organisation contributes its latest twelve months, and only organisations with at least fifty completed questionnaires count. New starters answer in their first months in post – we recommend sending the questionnaire at around eight to twelve weeks – about how they were recruited and inducted, whether the job is what they expected, whether they know what good looks like, and whether they can see a future. No organisation is named.

Most new starters are engaged. A sizeable minority are not yet.

One question does most of the work. We ask each new starter which statement best describes them. Of the 3,107 new starters asked this question, 81% said they want to progress their career with the organisation for the foreseeable future. We class them as engaged. 12% were undecided and 2% were dissatisfied and already considering alternatives: together, the at-risk group. The rest are largely outside the organisation’s influence: 3% always saw the job as temporary and 2% said circumstances beyond their control may mean they have to leave.

In the typical organisation, 83% of new starters are engaged and 14% are at risk. And only 53% expect to stay three years or more. For many new starters the question of how long to stay is still open, and what happens over the next few months will help answer it.

Recruitment and induction are mostly working

91% of new starters rate their recruitment as good or excellent, and 87% say the same of their induction. When we ask about each induction step separately, the lowest-rated are practical ones: introduction to extra-curricular activities (76% satisfactory), explanation of expense claims procedure (78% satisfactory) and explanation of travel policy and procedure (82% satisfactory). None is dramatic, but these are the parts of induction most easily left to chance.

For a quarter, the job is not a close fit to what they expected

75% say the job is a close or very close fit to what they expected before joining, and 76% say the same of the organisation. That leaves 25% who describe the job as only an okay or poor fit, or who had no particular expectations. Where expectations and reality part company, one place to look first is how the role was described during recruitment.

The gap that matters: performance clarity

We ask new starters a set of yes, no or unsure questions about whether they have been set up to succeed. The pattern is consistent. They are confident about the job itself: 94% are confident that their role adds value to the organisation, and 93% are clear about their overall role and responsibilities. What they lack is clarity about how they will be judged and developed. Only 66% say they have agreed a development plan with their line manager – the weakest item in the set. 77% understand how their performance is measured, 78% are clear about how it will be reviewed and 79% receive regular feedback from their manager.

The development-plan gap is not confined to one kind of employer: 69% of private-sector new starters and 68% in NHS trusts say they have one. The all-organisations figure is lower than both because the public sector, education and not-for-profit organisations, not shown separately, report fewer plans.

And the gap sits awkwardly next to the reason many of them joined. Asked what most attracted them to the organisation, new starters most often chose opportunities for learning and development (29%), the nature of the work itself (15%), work–life balance (13%), the people who work there (4%) and being local to where they live (4%). These are shares of all 3,281 asked; a few less common answers are not counted. People who join for development and find no plan for it a few months in are being given a reason to reconsider.

What they say would help

We also ask every new starter, in their own words, for the one thing that would most improve their performance. Across the 11 organisations where we can theme those comments, the most common answer by a distance is more training and development, in 23% of usable comments. Next come more feedback, supervision and 1:1s (8%), flexible working / WFH (3%) and more staff or admin support (3%). Pay is mentioned in 2%. People in their first months are asking to get better at the job, and for the conversations that would help them do it.

Asked what they dislike most about the job, the most frequent answer (23% of usable comments) is some version of “nothing”. After that come workspace, estates and facilities (5%) and workload, staffing and pressure (5%).

The difference between organisations is large

The share of engaged new starters ranges from 71% to 94% across organisations, with the middle half between 77% and 89%. The at-risk share runs from 3% to 26% (middle half 10–16%). The typical private-sector organisation has 90% of new starters engaged; the typical NHS trust 78%. Similar organisations get quite different results from new starters’ first months, and in our experience much of that difference is in their own hands: who manages the new starter, and how.

What to do with this

For how to design that questionnaire, see What to ask new starters, and when. For managers taking on someone new, the early-leaver risk check turns these findings into a ten-minute review of one person. For the NHS picture over the December 2024 – December 2025 report window, see The first 90 days in the NHS and The early-leaver window in the NHS. They draw on a different period and mix of trusts from the five NHS trusts here, so their NHS figures differ.

The figures at a glance

Every headline measure side by side, for all organisations and for the two sectors large enough to show separately.