The new hire shows up at 6:45 for a 7:00 start. Nobody told him which door. The supervisor is in a meeting. He spends the first two hours watching a safety video filmed in somebody else's plant.
By Friday he has decided whether he is staying. Most plants never find out what he decided until he stops showing up.
The first year is where people leave
The Work Institute's 2025 Retention Report found that as much as 40 percent of turnover happens in an employee's first year. It counted 63 percent of 2024 exits as preventable.
Lack of career growth alone was cited by 18.9 percent of the people who quit. Management issues accounted for 9.7 percent, up from 7.4 percent in 2022.
A video does not fix a bad manager. But the first weeks set expectations, and plenty of early exits start with a first day that felt like nobody planned for them.
Before day one
Send a two minute welcome the week before they start. Filmed in your building, by the people they will meet. Keep it short. Here is how long a training video should be.
Where to go. The parking lot, the door, the badge office, the locker room. Walk it on camera.
What to bring and wear. Boots, clothes, lunch, paperwork. The questions people are embarrassed to ask.
Who meets them. The supervisor saying hello by name, and the trainer they will shadow. A face they recognize at 6:45 changes the whole morning. If your supervisor dreads the camera, read what happens when people freeze on camera.
What the first week looks like. Day by day, honestly. If the first two days are classroom, say so. Our post on the realistic job preview explains why showing the hard parts helps the right people stay.
A face they recognize at 6:45 changes the whole first morning.
On day one and in the first weeks
Safety, filmed on your floor. Your aisles, your exits, your lockout points, your PPE. People remember what looks like the place they work. If your people gown up, gowning training belongs in the same series. More on safety training video for plants.
The station before the station. A short look at the job they are about to learn, so the trainer is not starting from zero. We write about this in training videos without an LMS and video work instructions.
The people who stayed. An operator who has been there for years explaining what he wishes he had known in week one. That one clip does more than a policy binder.
Where the job can go. Nearly one in five people who quit cited career growth. Show the path: the operator who became a lead, the lead who runs a shift. More on starting an apprenticeship program.
Film it in your building
Generic onboarding videos are easy to buy and easy to ignore. People tune out a module filmed somewhere else before the first slide finishes. When they see their own equipment, their own layout and their own hazards, the attention changes.
That is why we film in your space. At Apex Dental Laboratory Group, that meant technicians at their own benches and interviews in the lab's own conference room, so the people watching recognize where they are.
It also does not take much of anyone's time. Interviews run about twenty minutes each, so five people take under two hours, and the rest is filming the work while it happens. No line stops for a shot. More on what filming does to production.
Keep it current. When the parking lot moves or the supervisor changes, reshoot that piece. We build training libraries the same way: when a process changes, one module gets replaced instead of the entire set. A welcome from someone who left last year is worse than no welcome at all.
Where video does not help
Video will not fix pay, schedules or a supervisor people do not want to work for. It will not replace a trainer who has time to teach. It makes the first weeks feel planned, which is the part most plants skip.
The short version
As much as 40 percent of turnover happens in the first year, and most of it is preventable.
Send a two minute welcome before day one: where to go, what to wear, who meets them.
Film safety and the first job on your own floor, so new hires recognize it.
Show where the job can go. Nearly one in five who quit cited career growth.
Video makes the first weeks feel planned. It cannot fix pay or managers.