Eighty-six percent of new hires decide how long they will stay with a company within their first six months. Not their first six years. Six months. In this special conversation dropped in the middle of fall onboarding season, Andrew sits down with Jessi Jaquish of Union Bank of Vermont and New Hampshire, a CFTEA board member and the head of a two-person training department, about starting with no map, the one person who changed everything, and what it means to build the training you wish you'd had. They talk about career cushioning, why it goes in two directions, and what fellow employees and managers can do this week for somebody quietly deciding whether to stay. This one goes gently and lands somewhere honest.

1. The map you don't have. Nobody walks in fully formed. Staying is often a decision you make before anybody else believes you should. And it usually isn't made alone.
2. The person who hands you one. Careers turn on somebody who quietly decided to invest before you'd earned it. That person is sometimes a manager. Often a peer. Being that person for somebody else, once you know the difference it made, is the work.
3. The map you build. The people who didn't have a training program are often the ones who end up building one. That isn't an accident. That's the shape leadership takes in a community bank.

KEY DATA POINTS REFERENCED

• Enboarder 2025 HR Leader Survey: 86% of new hires decide how long they will stay with a company within their first six months, and 19.5% of HR leaders name lack of connection with team or culture as the second most common reason new hires leave early.
• SHRM turnover data: 20% of turnover happens within the first 45 days of employment.
• Robert Walters survey (cited by Workable, 2024): 68% of American workers are engaging in career cushioning.
• Fortune (November 2022) and Forbes (May 2026): coverage of the career cushioning trend and its shift from a fringe behavior to a mainstream coping strategy.

One Small Thing You Can Do Today

Think of one person on your team who is in their first ninety days. Not the person who's already thriving. The quieter one. The one who might be counting the polite ways to step away. Text them. Ask how you can support them. Give them one thing this week they can succeed at.

• Foundations in Banking Certificate: The 2026 anchor offer for people new to banking or new to a role, and the natural entry point for anybody in their first ninety days.
• ABA Principles of Banking: The foundation course that opens the door for people coming into banking from outside the industry.
• Frontline Fundamentals: A free transfer credit offering for community banks and credit unions onboarding new frontline employees this fall.
• Engaging Adult Learners: For the person tasked with training new hires and building the guides that didn't exist before.

Guest Information

Jessi Jaquish is a member of the CFTEA Board of Directors and works at Union Bank of Vermont and New Hampshire, where she leads a two-person training department serving the bank's employees across Vermont and New Hampshire. Her onboarding materials, including three separate guides of over two hundred pages each, a three-week new-hire plan, and a three-day orientation, are used across the institution. Jessi started her banking career as a Float Teller.

Visit cftea.org to find a course that fits your role and take the first step.