Preventing Employee Turnover: Building a Workplace Employees Won’t Want to Leave

Employee turnover remains one of the most pressing challenges for HR professionals and business leaders today. In fact, many experts worry a new wave of pent-up resignations may be coming: “The 2025 quitting wave is coming,” argues Stephan Meier, the James P. Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, in HR Dive. 

He cites a new Glassdoor report that finds nearly two-thirds of employees (nearly three-quarters in tech specifically) feel stuck, stagnant, and—worse—resentful in their roles. “For the time being, employers may be benefiting from unusually low turnover rates, but they shouldn’t be complacent—a wave of revenge quitting is on the horizon,” writes Glassdoor in its report.

While the immediate costs of recruiting, onboarding, and training replacements are significant, the secondary costs—lost institutional knowledge, diminished team morale, and potential damage to customer relationships—can have even more profound long-term effects. Just the replacement cost for an employee can equal 33% of their yearly salary, according to Employee Benefit News (EBN); but when accounting for all secondary considerations, voluntary turnover can cost as much as $110,000 per lost employee.

The good news: EBN also found that 75% of the causes behind employee turnover are preventable. 

How to Retain Employees and Reduce Employee Turnover

1. Understanding Employee Turnover at Your Organization

To effectively address employee turnover, businesses must first understand its root causes. Start with formal, consistent exit interviews of employees who leave. “As each organization is unique, the first step is for HR professionals to identify key reasons why their employees are leaving,” says Mark Smith, Ph.D., director of HR thought leadership at the SHRM Research Institute. “They can then benchmark those reasons and their available budget against the nationwide data and identify strategic solutions to create better workplaces.”

Exit interviews often reveal recurring themes: dissatisfaction with compensation, lack of career advancement opportunities, burnout, and misalignment between employee needs and workplace policies. By taking a systematic approach to gathering and analyzing feedback—including stay interviews and anonymous surveys—organizations can gain actionable insights into the factors driving departures.

For example, one common—and avoidable—driver of turnover is a perceived lack of growth opportunities (more on this point below). Employees who feel stuck in their roles are more likely to seek greener pastures. Similarly, unresolved issues related to workload or team dynamics can lead to disengagement and attrition. Exit interviews can uncover these and similar issues.

2. Improve Compensation and Benefits

The SHRM Research Institute’s Better Workplaces on a Budget report looked specifically at the drivers of voluntary turnover. The number one issue was inadequate total compensation. 

Competitive pay demonstrates that an organization values its employees and understands their financial realities. This includes not only offering industry-benchmarked salaries but also providing meaningful benefits such as retirement plans, bonuses, and health insurance.

Even non-monetary benefits, like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), can be considered part of total compensation.

One possible low-cost solution is to provide employees total rewards statements. “While this would not raise salaries,” writes SHRM, “it would allow workers to see a more complete picture of what organizations are paying to employ them.” 

In other words, some parts of the employees’ total compensation beyond baseline wages might be obscure or even invisible to them without more communication from employers. Help them to understand the full scope of rewards available to them.

3. Offer Career Development and Advancement Opportunities

The second most common driver of employee turnover, according to the SHRM report, was the lack of career development options, listed as a Top Three concern by 61% of HR professionals. The Conference Board found a similar result in its own survey looking at turnover, with 58% of respondents saying they’d be likely to leave an employer who did not provide adequate training and development options.

So, one of the most effective ways to retain employees is to invest in their professional growth. A meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management found that training alone increases employee retention by 14% across all training measures studied.

Employees want to feel that their roles are steppingstones to something greater, not dead ends. Providing opportunities for career development—such as mentorship programs, leadership training, and access to online learning platforms—can significantly enhance employee retention. Even just regular performance reviews that focus on growth and development rather than solely evaluating past performance can help identify opportunities for internal mobility.

4. Enhance and Build Out Workplace Flexibility

Employee desire for workplace flexibility has grown exponentially in recent years, and as a result, it has turned into a major differentiator in the talent marketplace. Flexible work arrangements—including remote work options, flexible hours, and compressed workweeks—empower employees to balance their professional and personal lives more effectively.

It also empowers employers both to recruit and then to retain employees. A study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that applicants were more attracted to organizations offering flexible work options. A Conference Board survey found that 71% of respondents that had mandated an on-site work policy were struggling to retain workers, compared to only 46% of employers who offered flex policies to workers. 

Interestingly, the study mentioned above tried to determine whether flexible scheduling ("flextime") or flexible working location ("flexplace") were more impactful and found flextime outperformed flexplace, though both had independent effects on recruitment and employee retention. 

5. Right-sizing Work Expectations

Unrealistic work expectations can be a significant driver of employee turnover; this was the fourth most common cause of turnover, according to the Better Workplaces on a Budget report. In short, when employees are consistently asked to perform at unsustainable levels, burnout is inevitable. This not only affects their performance but also their overall job satisfaction and loyalty to the organization.

Here, HR professionals and managers should work together to ensure that expectations are reasonable and that employees have the resources they need to succeed. This may involve redistributing tasks, hiring additional staff, or automating repetitive processes to alleviate pressure on existing team members.

The Bottom Line of Employee Turnover and Retention 

Ultimately, preventing turnover isn’t just about retaining talent; it’s about creating a workplace culture that inspires loyalty and engagement. For HR professionals and business leaders, the question isn’t just “How to retain employees?” but also “How can we make this a place where employees want to build their futures?” 

For help answering that question—and implementing the strategies that can keep your highest value workers around for the long-term—learn more about CoAdvantage’s HR consulting and administrative services. CoAdvantage, one of the nation’s largest Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs), helps small to mid-sized companies with HR administration, benefits, payroll, and compliance.