If you had to pick one simple lever to improve retention, you could do a lot worse than helping every new hire make a real friend in week one. Gallup has measured this for decades: employees who strongly agree they have a “best friend at work” are seven times more likely to be engaged—and engagement is tightly linked to lower turnover. Meanwhile, in the U.S., only two in 10 employees report having a best friend at work. That’s a giant, fixable gap.

Why friendships protect against attrition

Engagement, work friendships and retention move together in a big way. Gallup’s latest Q12 meta-analysis—spanning 2.7M employees—found that high-engagement teams have up to 43% lower turnover. Gallup also finds retention is often preventable: 52% of people who quit say their organization could have done something to keep them, and replacing a single employee often costs 50% - 200% of annual salary once you add recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity. That’s the leak you’re trying to plug.

And it’s not just retention that benefits. A massive meta-analysis of 26 studies across 1061 groups (cheekily titled “Friends with performance benefits”) found that groups where team members were friends significantly outperformed those where everyone were mere acquaintances.  

Short-tenured attrition hurts the most

Early exits are the costliest because you’ve paid to hire and ramp, but you haven’t recouped anything. The Work Institute’s 2025 Retention Report estimates roughly 40% of all turnover happens in the first year, emphasizing targeted onboarding and early connection as the highest-ROI interventions.

What does a single early quit cost? Multiple reviews converge on large numbers:

• A Center for American Progress review across 31 case studies pegs typical replacement cost around 21% of salary for most roles.
  
• A 2020 Equitable Growth study places the average at ~40% of annual pay (median ~23.5%).

On a $50,000 role, 40% ≈ $20,000—before you count morale drag and lost customer continuity. That’s why even a tiny dent in early attrition creates outsized savings. 

How a tiny “welcome” creates outsized ROI

A lightweight nudge at the right moment can catalyze friendships:

• Auto-inviting each new hire to share a short and engaging “about me”, designed to emphasize the aspects of personality that helps people connect and fuel a first-day dopamine hit we get when we share a little about ourselves
  
• Nudging teammates to react/comment, opening DMs and day-one intros.
  
• Dropping the intro into a visible channel so connections compound.

This is exactly what Welcomepage is designed to do: it greases the skids for that first wave of authentic, two-way introductions—at the precise moment when it matters for retention.

Back-of-the-napkin math

• Cost: ~$8 per welcomepage for a new hire.
  
• Conservative benefit: Preventing just 1 early quit in a year at a $50k salary saves about $20,000 on average turnover costs.
  
• If you hire 100 people this year, that’s $800 in Welcomepage cost vs. $20,000 saved for preventing just one early departure—25× ROI.

The bottom line

For the price of a first day latte, you can give a new hire a warm on-ramp to real relationships. The science says friendships amplify engagement, engagement reduces turnover, and first-year quits are both common and costly. In that world, an $8 welcome that helps even a handful of people find “their person” at work is one of the best retention bets you can make.