Onboarding, Matching and Employee Turnover - A Field Experiment

Abstract

We evaluate how a low-cost onboarding practice affects turnover among newly hired frontline employees. In partnership with a large German retail chain, we ran a field experiment across more than 900 stores hiring 2368 employees over the study period. Treated stores implemented a structured welcome intervention: managers announced the newcomer in advance and hosted a brief social event with their colleagues on the first day, while control stores continued with business-as-usual onboarding. Contrary to the view that early social integration reduces attrition, we find that the intervention increases separation in the first month: both quits and dismissals rise. Complementary evidence on performance as well as evidence from the survey suggest that the intervention primarily accelerates learning about match quality for both workers and the employer rather than increasing employee attachment to the firm.