New Hire Turnover Rate
Also known as First-Year Attrition, Infant Attrition, Early Turnover
New hire turnover rate is the percentage of new employees who leave within a defined early window — most often 90 days, six months or one year of joining. It is a hiring and onboarding metric rather than a retention one, because departures this early usually trace back to selection, role clarity or the first-weeks experience.
Formula
New Hire Turnover Rate (%) = (New hires who left within the window ÷ Total hires in that cohort) × 100Measure by joining cohort, not by calendar period. Mixing cohorts means a hiring surge can move the number without anything changing in the experience.
Worked example
- Scenario
- A company hires 120 people in Q1. By the end of Q4, 19 of those 120 have left.
- Calculation
- (19 ÷ 120) × 100
- Result
- 15.8% first-year new hire turnover for the Q1 cohort
What good looks like
First-year attrition of 15–20% is common; the 90-day figure is the more diagnostic one and should generally stay in the low single digits. A 90-day rate above about 5% almost always points at a mismatch between the role as advertised and the role as experienced.
Why new hire turnover rate matters
Early departures are the most expensive kind. You have paid the full cost of hiring and onboarding and recovered none of the productivity, and the role is now vacant again with the hiring team's credibility dented. Unlike general turnover, the causes are unusually tractable — job descriptions, interview process, manager readiness and the first-30-days plan are all things you control directly.
How to improve it
- 1Compare what the job advert promised against what the first 90 days actually involved. Mismatch here is the single most common cause.
- 2Check manager readiness. New hires whose manager had no onboarding plan leave early at a much higher rate.
- 3Run a 30-day and 90-day pulse survey rather than waiting for the annual engagement cycle.
- 4Review which sourcing channels produce early leavers — cost-per-hire savings from a cheap channel evaporate if the hires do not stay.
- 5Track it by hiring manager and by interviewer panel to find where selection is going wrong.
Common mistakes
- Reporting it by calendar quarter instead of by joining cohort, which mixes populations with different tenure.
- Only measuring at 12 months, by which point the diagnostic signal from the first weeks is gone.
- Excluding people who left during probation, which removes exactly the cases you most need to understand.
Frequently asked questions
What window should I use — 90 days, 6 months or a year?
Track 90 days and 12 months together. The 90-day figure isolates selection and onboarding problems; the 12-month figure captures role fit and early career-path issues. Reporting only one loses half the picture.
Is new hire turnover a recruiting or an HR problem?
Usually both, which is why it should be a shared metric. Ninety-day exits point at recruiting and onboarding; six-to-twelve-month exits point more often at the manager and the role itself.
Related metrics
Employee turnover rate is the percentage of employees who leave an organisation over a set period, divided by the average headcount for that period. It is the headline retention metric most HR teams report to their board, and it covers both voluntary resignations and involuntary exits.
Quality of HireQuality of hire is a composite measure of how well new hires perform and how long they stay, typically combining early performance rating, ramp speed, retention and hiring-manager satisfaction. It is the metric that tells you whether recruiting is producing good hires rather than just fast, cheap ones.
Time to ProductivityTime to productivity is how long a new hire takes to reach the expected performance level for their role, measured from start date. It connects hiring, onboarding and learning to a single business-relevant outcome, and it is the largest hidden component of turnover cost.
Offer Acceptance RateOffer acceptance rate is the percentage of extended offers that candidates accept. It is the clearest single indicator of how your compensation, employer brand and candidate experience compare against the alternatives your finalists are considering.
Cost per HireCost per hire is the total internal and external recruiting spend divided by the number of hires in a period. It is the standard efficiency measure for talent acquisition and the basis for comparing sourcing channels against each other.
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