There is no shortage of employee retention advice, and most of it is sound. Career development, recognition, flexible work, strong managers, and fair pay can all help with retention. The harder question is which of those will help retain the people you most want to keep: your top performers, the employees in hard-to-fill jobs, and the new hires you have already invested in.
That question is worth answering before you invest time or budget, because employee retention strategies are not interchangeable. People leave for different reasons. A new hire may leave because the job turned out to be different from the one described in the interview. A strong performer may leave because a path forward does not seem clear. Another employee may leave because of how their manager runs the team. A strategy built for one of those reasons usually does little for the others, which is why two organizations can run the same program and get very different results.
Now is a good time to take this on. The U.S. quit rate, the share of workers who leave their jobs voluntarily each month, has eased from a peak of 3.0% in 2022 to 1.9% as of August 2026, so fewer employees are leaving their jobs overall. A lower quit rate can make retention look healthier than it is, though. Your top performers usually have the most opportunities elsewhere, and they are often the first to hear from recruiters when hiring picks up again. A steadier market gives HR and talent leaders room to build a thoughtful plan for keeping their best people.
The 15 strategies below are grouped by the problem they solve within an organization. You will also find a five-step process for building your plan and guidance on measuring what is working.
TL;DR
- The problem: Employee retention strategies are not interchangeable, but most lists present them as if they were. That approach spreads time and budget across initiatives no one owns.
- The number to remember: Gallup found that 42% of employees who quit said their manager or organization could have done something to keep them. Nearly as many, 45%, said no manager or leader talked with them about their job in the three months before they left. Many preventable exits start with a conversation that never happened.
- What most lists leave out: An owner, a timeline, and one metric for each initiative. Those three things turn a list of ideas into a plan.
- Where to start: Pick three strategies rather than ten: one quick win, one longer-term fix, and one you can measure within a quarter.
What Are Employee Retention Strategies?
Employee retention strategies are intentional actions organizations take to keep their best employees engaged and committed for the long term. They span hiring, onboarding, career development, management, pay, and culture, because those are the areas where most preventable departures start. The strategies that work best are aimed at the specific reasons people leave, not at retention in general.
That is why this guide groups the strategies by the problem they solve. A recognition program can make a real difference for employees who feel their work goes unnoticed. It will do much less for new hires who leave in their second month because the job was not what they expected. Both are real retention problems, but they need different solutions.
Retention Strategy vs. Retention Program
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they mean different things:
- Retention strategy: the overall plan, meaning which employees matter most to retain and how you plan to do it.
- Retention programs: the specific initiatives inside that plan, such as onboarding, recognition, or a compensation review.
Many organizations run several retention programs without a clear strategy connecting them. Each program may make sense on its own, but together they are hard to measure, because no one decided which problem each one was meant to solve.
Start With the Problem, Not the List
Each of the 15 strategies below can help. The right ones for your organization depend on who is leaving and when.
- New hires leave in the first 90 days: the cause often sits in hiring or onboarding.
- Employees leave between their first and second year: career growth is a common factor.
- Departures cluster under one manager: the issue is usually management, and a company-wide policy is unlikely to fix it.
Each of those patterns calls for a different strategy, and a single company-wide retention rate does not show which one you have.
It is worth looking at that pattern before you commit a budget, even when retention looks healthy. Breaking down departures by tenure and by manager usually reveals patterns, and the five-step plan later in this guide walks through how to do it.
Why the Same Strategy Works in One Place and Not Another
Behind most preventable departures is a gap. It might be a gap between what an employee needs from the job and what the job offers, or between how the employee naturally works and what the job or team requires. Every employee has gaps like these, and that is normal. Gaps become costly when no one notices them until the employee has already decided to leave.
Most of what an organization knows about its employees comes from what managers observe. Manager observations are valuable, but they vary from one manager to the next. They can show that an employee is struggling without explaining why. When organizations pair those observations with objective data on how each person naturally works, gaps become easier to spot early: before the hire, during the first 90 days, and in regular one-on-ones.
That is why a retention program can work well for one team and have little effect on another. The program may be sound, but it was aimed at a gap the second team did not have.
15 Employee Retention Strategies, Grouped by What They Fix
The strategies fall into five groups of three: career and growth, leadership and management, compensation and recognition, culture and well-being, and foundations and systems. The graphic below shows all 15 at a glance.
The group that best matches the pattern you are seeing is a natural place to begin, and the other groups can serve as a checklist for later.
Career and Growth (Strategies 1 to 3)
This group matters most when employees leave between their first and second year. By then, many have learned the job and want to know what comes next. When a path forward at your organization is not clear, they are more likely to look for one somewhere else.
1. Build Clear Career Development Paths
Employees are more likely to stay when they can picture a future with your organization. In a Pew Research Center survey, 63% of workers who quit a job in 2021 said a lack of opportunities for advancement was one of the reasons, tied with low pay as the most common answer. A clear path forward does not mean promising promotions you may not be able to deliver. It means being clear about which jobs exist, how employees can move between them, and what it takes to get there.
When career paths are not written down, career conversations tend to stay vague and lead nowhere. Employees may conclude there is no future for them, even when there is. The employees you have invested the most in developing often have the most opportunities elsewhere, which makes a clear path especially important for them.
- Map the jobs and skills for your most important career paths, and write them down.
- Make it clear that lateral moves and expanded responsibilities count as growth, not just promotions.
- Review individual development plans quarterly rather than once a year.
For more on spotting and growing your strongest people, see How to Identify and Develop Top Performers.
2. Invest in Learning and Upskilling, Especially for High Performers
Many organizations spread professional development budgets evenly across employees. That feels fair, but it can leave high performers without the challenge they need to stay engaged. Strong performers often outgrow their jobs quickly, and recognition alone rarely replaces the chance to learn something new.
- Connect learning to the skills each job requires and to business goals, not to a general course catalog.
- Protect time for learning during the workweek so it does not depend on evenings and weekends.
- Offer high performers stretch assignments so they can grow without changing employers.
3. Prioritize Internal Mobility and Promote From Within
When most of your best openings go to external candidates, employees may conclude that the only way to advance is to leave. That belief can spread across a team, and replacing the employees who act on it adds recruiting and training costs.
- Post open jobs internally first, and give internal candidates serious consideration.
- Track internal fill rate as a retention metric, not only a recruiting metric.
- Reward managers for developing and promoting talent rather than holding on to their strongest people. See Existing Employees Should Be Valued as Much as New Hires.
Leadership and Management (Strategies 4 to 6)
This group matters most when departures cluster under specific managers, even while company-wide numbers look fine. It also has the widest reach. When one manager improves, the daily experience of everyone on that team improves too.
4. Strengthen Manager Effectiveness and Coaching
Gallup found that 45% of employees who left voluntarily said no manager or leader talked with them about their job satisfaction, performance, or future in the three months before they left. For many of those employees, what could have helped was not a new program. It was a regular one-on-one conversation.
Other Gallup research points in the same direction: managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. Engagement and retention are not the same thing, but together the two findings show how much influence managers have on whether employees stay. Many managers were promoted because they were good at their work, not because they were trained to lead people, and that gap often shows up in exactly these missed conversations. See First-Line Managers Could Be Killing Your Performance.
- Hold one-on-ones on a regular schedule, and avoid canceling them when things get busy.
- Train managers to coach, not just evaluate, and shift performance reviews in the same direction.
- Watch for micromanagement, a common reason well-intentioned managers lose good employees. See How to Recognize Micromanaging and Stop Doing It.
5. Clarify Expectations
Employees have a hard time succeeding when they are not sure what success looks like. Gallup found that as of May 2026, just 49% of U.S. employees say they know what is expected of them at work. That means about half of employees may be working hard without a clear target, and motivation tends to fade when effort does not seem to lead anywhere.
- Define what good performance looks like for each job, in writing and in plain language.
- Document responsibilities and who makes which decisions, so employees do not have to guess.
- Keep goals steady long enough for employees to reach them.
6. Build Psychological Safety and Open Communication
Google’s research on team effectiveness found that psychological safety was the most important of five factors that set its most effective teams apart. On those teams, people felt able to admit mistakes, ask questions, and share ideas without fear of being embarrassed or punished. When employees do not feel safe speaking up, problems tend to stay hidden until they are harder to fix, and the employees who once raised concerns often stop raising them. See The Importance of Open Communication and Building Trust at Work.
- Make it easy and safe for employees to raise problems early.
- Explain the reasoning behind decisions that affect employees, not just the decisions themselves.
- Follow up on feedback, and share what changed because of it.
Compensation and Recognition (Strategies 7 to 9)
Google’s research on team effectiveness found that psychological safety was the most important of five factors that set its most effective teams apart. On those teams, people felt able to admit mistakes, ask questions, and share ideas without fear of being embarrassed or punished. When employees do not feel safe speaking up, problems tend to stay hidden until they are harder to fix, and the employees who once raised concerns often stop raising them. See The Importance of Open Communication and Building Trust at Work.
- Make it easy and safe for employees to raise problems early.
- Explain the reasoning behind decisions that affect employees, not just the decisions themselves.
- Follow up on feedback, and share what changed because of it.
7. Pay Fairly and Communicate Compensation Clearly
Most organizations do not need to pay at the very top of the market. They do need employees to trust that pay decisions are fair and consistent, because pay that feels random can frustrate employees more than the number itself. Pay matters, but it rarely works alone. When researchers writing in MIT Sloan Management Review analyzed 34 million employee profiles, they found a toxic culture was 10.4 times more powerful than compensation in predicting a company’s attrition rate compared with its industry. Fair pay can keep compensation from becoming the reason people leave, and the rest of the strategies in this guide address what pay cannot.
- Review market pay for key jobs on a regular schedule, not only when someone resigns.
- Share pay ranges and promotion criteria, even if the ranges are wide.
- Explain how pay decisions are made, so employees understand both a raise and a decision not to give one.
8. Offer Meaningful Recognition, Not Employee of the Month
Recognition costs little and can make a real difference, but it works best when it feels genuine. A monthly award that rotates predictably around a team means less than a specific comment from a manager who noticed good work.
- Timely: Recognize work close to when it happens, not months later at a review.
- Specific: Name what the employee did and why it mattered.
- Peer to peer: Encourage employees to recognize each other, not just leave it to managers.
- Tied to values: Recognize the behaviors you want to see more of.
9. Offer Benefits and Rewards Employees Actually Value
A benefits package designed around the average employee may not fit many of your actual employees. Childcare support, schedule control, retirement contributions, and learning budgets matter to different people at different stages of life.
- Ask employees what they value before renewing benefits, rather than only benchmarking against competitors.
- Offer choice where your benefits structure allows it.
- Revisit the mix each year as your workforce changes.
Culture and Well-Being (Strategies 10 to 12)
Pay is often the first lever organizations reach for. It is a real reason employees leave, and it is also the easiest reason for employees to give in an exit interview. That makes compensation easy to overinvest in and easy to underestimate.
This group shapes whether a job feels sustainable over time. These factors are rarely the reason employees give for leaving, but they often sit underneath the reasons they do give.
10. Create Flexible Work Policies Employees Actually Trust
Flexibility can support retention, whether it means remote work, a hybrid schedule, or more control over shift times. Flexibility helps most when it is consistent. When a policy changes often or depends on which manager an employee reports to, employees can lose trust in it. Lost trust makes offers from other employers more appealing. Explain the reasoning behind any change, and give employees real notice. We shared our own experience with a compressed schedule in The Essential Guide to a 4-Day Workweek.
- Apply flexibility policies consistently across teams.
- Give on-site and shift-based employees their own forms of flexibility, such as input on schedules and shift preferences.
11. Protect Well-Being and a Sustainable Workload
Burnout often shows up first as a performance problem, usually after workload and work-life balance have been slipping for months. Much of what causes it is structural: too many competing priorities, constant urgency, and projects without enough people or resources.
- Set clear priorities, and keep the list of top priorities short.
- Staff critical work properly instead of relying on employees to absorb extra work.
- Train managers to notice early warning signs, such as withdrawal or a pattern of sick days.
- Reduce everyday friction. Slow approvals, outdated tools, and duplicated work can wear down motivation over time. Ask each team every quarter what slows them down, fix the top three issues, and treat that work as part of leadership.
Well-being goes beyond workload. 4 Ways to Expand the Concept of Employee Wellness covers the topic more broadly.
12. Strengthen Team Connection and Belonging
Strong relationships with coworkers make a job harder to leave. Friction between people who work in different ways is often one of the last issues a manager notices, sometimes only after it has affected how a strong employee feels about staying. Teams that work well together tend to hold on to their people, which is why understanding how employees’ natural work styles fit together belongs in a retention strategy.
- Make sure every team member is included in meetings, decisions, and informal moments.
- Encourage cross-functional projects so teams stay connected to the rest of the organization.
Foundations and Systems (Strategies 13 to 15)
This group is often overlooked because two of the three strategies happen before most people think about retention. It matters most when new hires leave within their first 90 days or when your organization keeps rehiring for the same jobs.
13. Hire for Job Fit, Not for Interview Performance
Some of the most effective retention work happens before a new hire’s first day. Every hire comes with gaps between the person and what the job requires, and that is normal. The trouble starts when those gaps go unnoticed until after the offer. By then, they can show up as missed goals, extra work for teammates, and a manager who is not sure where to start coaching.
Some gaps can be closed with coaching. Others, such as the ability to learn the job quickly or basic reliability, are much harder to change, so they need to be identified before the hire. When hiring teams can see gaps early, they can decide which ones they are comfortable taking on, and the new hire’s manager knows what to focus on first.
Your employer brand matters here too. A slow or unresponsive hiring process can sour a candidate’s view of your organization before day one, and candidates often share those experiences publicly. How you treat applicants is the first signal they get about how you treat employees.
- Describe the real work in the job description, including the less glamorous parts.
- Use consistent screening and interview questions so candidates are compared fairly.
- Assess for the qualities that predict success in the job, not only interview skills.
- Share what you learned during hiring with the new manager so it can shape the first coaching plan.
- Keep candidates informed throughout the process.
14. Upgrade Onboarding So New Hires Stay Past 90 Days
Orientation usually lasts a day, but onboarding takes months, and the first 90 days shape whether a new hire decides to stay. Many new employees start out motivated, then lose momentum when they feel lost or find the job is different from what they expected.
- Set up access, equipment, and a first-week plan before the start date.
- Assign a peer buddy who can answer questions a new hire may not want to ask their manager.
- Check in daily during the first week and weekly through the first 90 days.
15. Run Stay Interviews Before You Need Exit Interviews
A stay interview is a short, regular conversation with a current employee about what keeps them at the organization, what frustrates them, and what might lead them to leave. Exit interviews can explain why someone left, but by then the employee is already gone. Stay interviews ask similar questions while there is still time to act on the answers. They do not need to be formal, and they should not feel like a performance review. Exit interviews are still valuable, and Exit Interviews Can Shed Light on Turnover covers how to run them well.
- Hold stay interviews at least twice a year for critical jobs and once a year for other jobs.
- Ask consistent questions, such as what employees enjoy most, what drains them, and what might make them leave.
- Follow up on what you hear, so employees see that their input leads to action.
How to Turn These Strategies Into a Retention Plan
A list of 15 strategies is a reference, not a plan. A retention plan focuses on three or four strategies, each with a named owner, a timeline, and a clear definition of success. These five steps can help you build one.
1. Identify Who Is Leaving and Where
Company-wide averages can hide the patterns that matter most. Break down departures by job family, team, manager, tenure, location or shift, and performance level. Separate regrettable departures, the employees you most wanted to keep, from departures that matter less to the business.
2. Understand Why They Are Leaving
Focus on finding the top three causes rather than cataloging every possible reason. Pulse surveys, stay interviews, exit interview themes, and internal mobility data can reveal most of what you need. Public employer review sites can also surface concerns employees may not share internally.
3. Choose Your Initiatives, Mixing Quick Wins With Longer-Term Fixes
Some changes can show results within weeks, such as clarifying expectations, improving feedback, recognizing work more often, or removing a few workflow obstacles. Others take longer, such as manager training, career paths, pay structure updates, and job redesign. A strong plan includes both.
Prioritize by the cost of losing specific employees, not only by the number of departures, and start with a retention plan for your most critical jobs. McKinsey research found that high performers are 400% more productive than average performers, and up to 800% more productive in highly complex jobs. Losing one high performer can cost far more than one average departure.
4. Put the Plan Into Action
This step turns a list into a plan. Each initiative needs one named owner, a timeline, and a written definition of success. Spread ownership across HR and talent leaders rather than assigning everything to one person, so progress does not depend on a single calendar. The graphic and table below show what that can look like.
| Initiative | Owner | Timeline | What success looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly stay interviews for critical jobs | HR business partner | Start this month, review in 90 days | Every employee in a critical job has had one, and the top three themes each have an action |
| Written career paths for two job families | Talent lead | Two quarters | Paths published, and internal fill rate for those job families tracked monthly |
| A regular one-on-one schedule for frontline managers | Operations leader | Six weeks to roll out | 90% of scheduled one-on-ones held, measured monthly |
5. Measure Progress, Knowing Results Will Move at Different Speeds
Set a baseline before you start, review progress monthly or quarterly, and break results down by team and manager to see where the plan is working.
How to Measure Whether Your Retention Strategies Are Working
It helps to separate retention measures into two types:
- Lagging indicators show what has already happened and change slowly.
- Leading indicators show what is likely to happen next and can change within weeks.
Turnover is a lagging indicator. By the time an employee resigns, the decision was often made weeks or months earlier. Tracking leading indicators alongside turnover gives you a chance to act while there is still time to make a difference.
| Metric | Type | Typical time to see movement |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary turnover rate | Lagging | 2 to 4 quarters |
| Regrettable departures | Lagging | 2 to 4 quarters |
| Exits within the first 90 days | Lagging | 1 to 2 quarters |
| Internal fill rate and mobility | Mixed | 2 to 3 quarters |
| Clarity of expectations, from surveys | Leading | 1 to 2 quarters |
| Recognition and feedback frequency | Leading | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Burnout and workload signals | Leading | 4 to 8 weeks |
For each metric, set a baseline, review it on a regular schedule, and break it down by team and manager so company-wide averages do not hide problems in specific areas. For help calculating turnover, see How to Calculate Employee Turnover, and for industry comparisons, see Employee Turnover Rate Benchmarks by Industry.
Retention work usually needs budget, so it helps to show what losing employees costs. Gallup estimates that replacing a leader or manager costs about 200% of their salary, a technical professional about 80%, and a frontline employee about 40%. For a frontline employee earning $40,000, that is roughly $16,000 per departure. The Real Cost of Employee Turnover breaks down the full cost.
How Wonderlic Supports Your Retention Strategy
Two of the 15 strategies, building career paths (strategy 1) and hiring for job fit (strategy 13), depend on information a resume and an interview cannot fully provide: how a person naturally works and which gaps they need to close to succeed in the job. A manager’s view is based on what they have observed. Wonderlic’s insights are based on how each person naturally works.
Pick Three, Not Fifteen
The strategies in this guide are not meant to be run all at once. Organizations that improve retention usually focus on a small number of strategies aimed at a problem they can clearly see, give each one an owner and a metric, and add more once the first set is showing results.
The pattern that matters most to your organization points to the right starting place:
- If your newest employees are leaving, begin with hiring and onboarding.
- If strong performers are leaving after a year or two, focus on career growth.
- If departures cluster under certain managers, start with manager coaching.
Then choose three strategies, assign an owner to each, and set a baseline.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top 5 employee retention strategies?
The best employee retention strategies are the ones that address why your employees are leaving, so the right five depend on your situation. If you want one from each group that tends to make the biggest difference, start with clear career paths, regular manager one-on-ones, specific and timely recognition, a sustainable workload, and stay interviews. All five are largely within an employer’s control.
What is the difference between a retention strategy and a retention program?
A retention strategy is the overall plan: which employees matter most to retain and how you plan to do it. Retention programs are the specific initiatives inside that plan, such as onboarding, recognition, or a compensation review. Without a strategy connecting them, programs can be hard to measure, because it is unclear which problem each one is meant to solve.
How do you measure whether retention strategies are working?
Track lagging and leading indicators separately. Lagging indicators, such as voluntary turnover, regrettable departures, and exits in the first 90 days, change over quarters. Leading indicators, such as clarity of expectations, recognition frequency, feedback, burnout signals, and internal mobility, can change within weeks. Set a baseline for each, review them regularly, and compare results across teams and managers.
What are employee retention strategies for small businesses?
The same strategies apply, but the priorities may differ. Small businesses may not be able to compete on pay or benefits, so the biggest opportunities are often in areas that take time rather than money: clear expectations, managers who coach, room to grow without a formal career ladder, and consistent flexibility. Small businesses also tend to move faster, since they can often change a policy much more quickly than a large organization.
How are employee engagement and retention strategies related?
Engagement is one of the strongest influences on retention, but the two are not the same. Engagement describes how invested an employee is in their work right now. Retention describes whether that employee stays with the organization over time. An engaged employee may still leave for a clearer career path, which is why a retention strategy needs more than an engagement program. See Employee Engagement: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Improve It.
What are some innovative employee retention strategies?
Two approaches are often more useful than newer trends. Stay interviews help you learn what might lead an employee to leave while there is still time to act. Reducing everyday friction, such as slow approvals, outdated tools, and duplicated work, can also improve motivation. Neither requires new technology, and both address problems that perks and recognition programs cannot solve on their own.
How many retention strategies should we run at once?
Fewer than you might expect. Three or four initiatives with named owners and clear metrics are more likely to succeed than ten initiatives with shared ownership, because retention work competes with everything else on a manager’s calendar. Choose based on where departures are concentrated, pair one quick win with one longer-term fix, and add more once you have a baseline.
Data Sources
The primary sources behind every figure in this article.
- Gallup, “42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored,” published July 9, 2024, updated February 16, 2026. 42% of voluntary leavers said their manager or organization could have prevented their departure; 45% said no manager or leader proactively discussed their job with them in their final three months; replacement costs of about 200% of salary for leaders and managers, 80% for technical professionals, 40% for frontline employees. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx.
- Gallup, “Indicator: Employee Engagement,” U.S. data as of May 2026. 49% of U.S. employees say they know what is expected of them at work. https://www.gallup.com/394373/indicator-employee-engagement.aspx.
- Gallup, “Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement,” Randall J. Beck and Jim Harter, April 21, 2015. Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx.
- McKinsey & Company, “Attracting and retaining the right talent,” November 24, 2017. High performers are 400% more productive than average ones, and 800% in highly complex jobs. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/attracting-and-retaining-the-right-talent.
- Pew Research Center, “Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cite low pay, no opportunities for advancement, feeling disrespected,” March 9, 2022. 63% cited low pay and 63% cited no opportunities for advancement. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/.
- Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and Ben Zweig, “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation,” MIT Sloan Management Review, January 11, 2022. A toxic corporate culture is 10.4 times more powerful than compensation in predicting a company’s attrition rate compared with its industry; based on 34 million online employee profiles. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/toxic-culture-is-driving-the-great-resignation/.
- Google re:Work, “Guide: Understand team effectiveness.” Psychological safety as the most important of five dynamics of effective teams. https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), quits rate (series JTSQUR). Peak of 3.0% in 2022; 1.9% in August 2026, per the release of September 29, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm.
- Worked example in the business case paragraph: $40,000 x 40% = $16,000, using Gallup’s frontline multiplier above.
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