Your first week at a remote job is a test.
Not of your skills but of your company's infrastructure. You sit at your home desk, laptop open, waiting. Someone sends you a Slack message at 9:03am: "Welcome! Let me know if you need anything."
And then... silence.
In an office, you'd wander over to someone's desk. You'd absorb context from hallway conversations. You'd learn who actually knows what by watching people interact. Remote? All of that is invisible. And if no one built a map for you, you're navigating blind.
This week: Onboarding, the "O" in REMOTE Score and why it's where retention problems actually begin.
The Invisible Struggle
Here's the uncomfortable math: 20% of employee turnover happens within the first 45 days. Another 33% of new hires start looking for a new job within six months.
By the time most companies notice someone's struggling, they've already mentally quit.
And remote makes this worse. When you can't see someone's face, you can't see them drowning. There's no hovering near the coffee machine looking lost. No hesitant glances in meetings. Just green Slack dots and silence.
The data confirms what anyone who's been poorly onboarded already knows: only 12% of employees say their company does a great job of onboarding. And remote-only onboarding trails hybrid by 10 percentage points in satisfaction.
What actually goes wrong:
The problem isn't that companies don't try. It's that they confuse orientation with onboarding.
Orientation is logistics: "Here's your laptop, here's Slack, here's the employee handbook."
Onboarding is integration: "Here's how we actually work. Here's who to ask when you're stuck. Here's what success looks like in your role—not in the job description, but in practice."
Remote companies that get onboarding right engineer what in-office companies get for free: context, connection, and clarity.
Three moves that actually work:
- Assign an onboarding buddy (not the manager) Microsoft's research found that new hires with onboarding buddies were 23% more satisfied after their first week and 36% more satisfied at 90 days. The key: the buddy isn't evaluating you. They're the person you can ask "dumb questions" without worrying about your performance review.
- Front-load the human connection Schedule some 1:1 or small group facetime with key teammates in week one. Remote workers don't bump into people. Connection requires deliberate facilitation.
- Make the implicit explicit In an office, new hires learn unwritten rules by observation. Remote? Write them down. Document not just what people do, but how decisions get made, who owns what, and where the real conversations happen.
Companies spend 50-200% of salary to replace someone who leaves. Most would balk at spending even 5% of that on proper onboarding infrastructure.
If you're a job seeker, ask about onboarding in your interviews. "What does the first 90 days look like?" isn't just a good question—it's a litmus test. Vague answers often mean you'll be figuring it out alone.
If you’re a job seeker: here's how to spot good onboarding before you accept. Ask these questions in interviews. The answers tell you everything:
- “What does my first week look like?”
- “Do you assign onboarding buddies?”
- “How do you define success at 30/60/90 days?”
- “Where is your documentation? Is it actually used?”
- “How do new hires build relationships remotely?”
A company that can’t answer these isn’t “moving fast.”
They’re outsourcing the cost of chaos onto you.