May 07, 2026
When Employee Onboarding Fails, Customers Feel It Too
Employee onboarding is arguably the most important moment to get right in the employee experience. Yet this is exactly the point where organisations are failing their people. And the problem is getting worse.
Recent research from Qualtrics highlights a sharp decline in the onboarding experience over the past two years. In 2025, employees globally rated it as one of the most “underwhelming” work experiences. In 2026, it has deteriorated further. Among employees with less than one year’s tenure, engagement has dropped from 72% to 65% — the lowest point since 2021. Only around a third feel the reality of their new role matches what they were led to expect, which tallies with research elsewhere suggesting that ‘job catfishing’ – a lack of honesty in the recruitment process – is on the rise.
The honeymoon period that used to characterise the early weeks of a new job has largely gone. Qualtrics goes as far as describing the new hire experience as having turned “downright bitter” in its 2026 Employee Experience Trends Report. This pattern is particularly pronounced in large organisations of between 5,000 and 10,000 employees.
A further signal worth noting is that only 37% of new hires report receiving open and honest communication from their employer in this period. And when it comes to challenging traditional ways of doing things, only half feel comfortable doing so.
“Relative to other employee experiences, the new hire experience sticks out like a sore thumb,” says Dr Benjamin Granger, Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics. “If I could cherry-pick the worst experience for employers to drop the ball on, it would be onboarding.”
Onboarding and the ‘Primacy Effect’
Why this decline matters so deeply is the ripple effect it creates on the broader employee experience. And, more specifically, how much it shapes whether people feel they belong and matter over the longer term.
“From a psychological perspective, the first experiences employees go through are some of the most important: they colour and shape the lenses through which employees perceive everything that comes after,” Granger says.
This is called the ‘Primacy Effect’, and it’s something EX professionals need to be especially mindful of, says Danny Seals, VP of People Transformation and Experience at RAKBANK. “It basically dictates that the first interaction and start of an experience disproportionately colours the memory of the whole experience.”
This psychological framing matters because employee onboarding goes well beyond the transferring of information. It signals to a new hire how the organisation treats its people. When that signal is weak, it shapes every subsequent interaction the employee has with the organisation. For example, if a new hire arrives and they don’t have an email address set up, or their equipment hasn’t arrived, that sends a message to the new hire that their time isn’t that valuable yet – even if that’s not how the employer views the situation.
The Onboarding–Customer Connection
Another reason why weak onboarding carries serious consequences is its downstream impact on customer experience (CX).
“The blast radius of underinvesting in experiences like onboarding is not limited to new hires. It extends to customers — and we’re already seeing the symptoms,” says Granger.
The research shows that new employees disproportionately fill frontline and customer-facing roles. When a significant proportion of those new hires don’t receive adequate training, support, and feedback on joining, it’s the customers who feel it.
This is not to say that frontline workers are unaware of the customer experience problems that poor onboarding exacerbates. Quite the contrary. The root causes they cite — communication problems and service delivery failures — closely mirror the concerns expressed by global consumers. Both groups are acutely aware of the service issues that arise from ill-equipped new hires. The gap sits at the executive level. “When we compared their responses to what 20,000 global consumers said in a separate study, frontline workers were much closer to what actual consumers say,” Granger notes.
The Onboarding Design Gap
From an employee experience design perspective, one of the primary causes of substandard onboarding is the prioritisation of efficiency. Getting the new employee ‘up and running’ as quickly as possible takes precedence over making them feel they matter. But to create that lasting positive experience, the long (and sometimes less intuitive) route is more powerful.
“Logically, a new hire doesn’t need to choose the colour of their notebook or the specific brand of their keyboard,” says Seals. “Psychologically, however, granting small choices on Day 1 shifts the internal narrative from ‘I am being processed’ to ‘I am an architect of my environment’.”
Organisations need to think far more about the signals they send in these early days, and far less about the speed to productivity. A signal of ‘care’, for example, might look like a busy manager making the time to take their newest team member out for a non-work-related lunch. A signal of ‘value’ could be asking the new hire for their opinions on the latest marketing campaign, product launch, or upcoming event plan.
It all essentially comes down to treating your employees as you would your customers. “Good onboarding looks like a high end Customer Experience,” says Seals. “It anticipates the person’s anxiety, removes friction before they encounter it, and prioritises emotional resonance over functional completion.”
The Cost of Getting Onboarding Wrong
The cost of getting this wrong is significant. “Organisations that fail to design this window with rigour are essentially paying a massive tax,” says Seals. “They are spending thousands to find talent, only to let the Experience Leak drive that talent away before the honeymoon is even over.”
The organisations getting onboarding right invest their time in building trust, relationships, and understanding upfront — and reap the rewards of loyal, motivated employees over the long run. As Granger puts it, the highest-performing organisations “treat listening as an operating rhythm, rather than an annual evaluative exercise.” And, crucially, they act on what they hear.
A good starting point is measuring the reality of the current new-hire experience. Find the data that shows where you’re falling short, and examine the signals you’re sending that cause or worsen those failures. Sometimes it’s a small reframe – in the language you use, the choices you offer, or the time managers spend in informal conversation – that makes a notable difference.
