Will you Lose Top Talent in 2025? Top 3 Indicators of Turnover and How to Prevent It

Will you be losing your top talent this year before you know it’s happening? According to a recent Glassdoor survey, a “quitting wave” is predicted to occur in 2025, with many professionals feeling dissatisfied. Their frustrations include not being paid what they feel they’re worth, feeling stuck in their jobs with no opportunity to advance in their careers, a lack of support from the boss, and a growing desire for a better work-life balance. All of this means that employers need to proactively address employee needs to retain top talent. In this blog we'll explore indicators of potential turnover and some practical strategies to avoid losing your best employees.

Indicators of potential turnover:

1. Another recent Glassdoor survey indicated that two thirds of employees feel stuck in their jobs and are not happy. “Revenge quitting” is the new term for how employees have become more vocal when they leave their jobs, making their grievances known, as an outcome for the angst of their workplace.  It’s based on employees who quit their job at an inopportune time such as leaving with a premise based on “you don’t care about me and I’m going to leave” or quitting in the heat of the moment.  If your workplace is dysfunctional, uncivil, or toxic you want to assess why this is the case. And if managers are creating or exacerbating the toxicity by openly discussing it with their staff, that only creates further dissension. 

2. Gen Z and Millennials are very clear on work life boundaries and not being married to their jobs. They became comfortable working in a remote or hybrid workplace during the pandemic. Several companies like Amazon are saying employees must come back to work full-time. Many leaders have wanted to change the rules of work, change schedules, and do more with less people. Before you consider major changes, assess the ripple effect of these changes and the impact on employee satisfaction. 

3. Another indicator of potential turnover is increased absenteeism. Increased absenteeism is often a precursor to high turnover as employees are signaling dissatisfaction with work or are having personal issues. Have you noticed employees missing workdays? Perhaps you’re not aware of your employee’s health or family issues. Or they are fed up with the workplace culture, pressures, and overall working conditions. Absenteeism is a signal to managers to check in on their employees, to ask questions, and see how they are doing. 

   
   

Strategies to avoid losing your best and brightest employees:

If you suspect that you may be losing your top talent in 2025, what can you do about it? The first step is to assess what’s going on and identify root causes. Below are some strategies on how you can do this:

Stay interviews: If you haven’t conducted stay interviews, you’re missing out on a goldmine of information. Their primary purpose is to discover why employees stay with your organization and enhance employee engagement. These interviews can significantly reduce turnover by proactively identifying potential issues and concerns that could lead to an employee leaving. TBP has developed customized scripted effective stay interviews and can teach you. 

Employee engagement surveys: Surveys are another vehicle to collect feedback that provides valuable insights into employee satisfaction, identifying concerns, and allowing organizations to proactively address issues that may lead to employees leaving. Based on survey data results, organizations can implement targeted strategies to address concerns. Keep in mind that if you decide to implement a survey, make sure to share the data. This gives management an opportunity to demonstrate transparency, share results, and define a plan of action to address concerns. TBP has decades of experience creating surveys and developing plans based on results.

Exit interviews: These interviews are conducted before one of your employees voluntarily resigns. Data from these interviews can provide information about the work they did, input on leadership, and what they could have done differently to keep them. Often HR conducts these interviews. However, if HR isn’t doing anything with the data, then employees won’t see the value of participating in an exit interview. The purpose of the exit interview is to gain insights and do something about it with your leadership team. Therefore, companies are using outside resources like TBP for non-biased views of data that may be ignored or passed over by internal HR.

Lastly, what commitments have you made to your high performers? If there have been discussions where a manager has talked about promotions, pay increases, etc. and nothing has happened in the past six months or year – beware! You’ve set up an expectation. And, if your high performer has taken on more responsibilities, new accounts/clients, they will become frustrated and leave. Investing in your employee’s professional development contributes to the overall success of the organization. When they come to you to discuss those previous commitments, be prepared to own up to your promises and provide the promotion, pay increases, etc. Otherwise, they will leave and find another opportunity. 

In summary, implementing these strategies can reveal a variety of insights that can benefit your organization to retain your top talent.

The Bradley Partnerships (TBP) is your trusted partner with extensive experience in employee retention to actualize these strategies. TBP provides HR consulting services that include conducting exit interviews or developing surveys. Let us help be your outsourced HR partner to create a positive work environment. Contact TBP to learn more about our HR consulting services and our customized approach for your organization. 

You can reach the Pittsburgh corporate office at: (724)799-8170, by visiting our website at www.bradleypartnerships.com, or email us at info@bradleypartnerships.com