Gallup found that 42% of Americans who voluntarily left an employer believed their manager or organization could have prevented their departure. The finding points to a retention problem that salary increases alone may not resolve, involving the quality of management and employees’ daily work.
The 2024 study surveyed 717 people who had left an employer during the preceding year. Their answers describe what they believed could have persuaded them to stay, not the results of an experiment showing which interventions would work.
The research does not provide a separate estimate for highly paid or high-performing employees. It does show why businesses need to investigate the reasons behind a resignation before assuming that a counteroffer will settle the matter.
What is employee retention?
Employee retention is an organization’s ability to keep its workers over time. The business concern is usually unwanted turnover, particularly the loss of people whose experience or skills are difficult to replace.
Not every departure signals a failure. Employees may move, change careers or accept responsibilities their current employer cannot offer. Retention policies need to distinguish those decisions from problems within the workplace.
Managers may hear about concerns too late
In Gallup’s study, 45% of voluntary leavers said no manager or other leader had proactively discussed their satisfaction, performance or future at the organization during their final three months.
Compensation and benefits were the most common suggested way to prevent a departure, accounting for 30% of responses about preventable exits. Other answers concerned relationships with managers, organizational frustrations, career advancement and staffing or workloads.
A salary increase can address a pay complaint. It leaves different questions unanswered if someone wants a route to promotion, clearer responsibilities or fewer scheduling problems. Asking about those concerns while an employee is still settled gives management more time to respond.
The work itself deserves attention
A 2007 meta-analysis of 259 studies in the Journal of Applied Psychology linked job design with satisfaction, organizational commitment and intentions to leave. A meta-analysis combines findings from multiple studies to examine broader patterns.
Social features of work, including relationships and support, explained additional differences in employee attitudes beyond the motivational characteristics of their jobs. Pay is one part of an employment relationship; how work is organized and experienced also matters.
A 2026 review by University of Leeds researchers Chenyang Li and Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa examined “illegitimate tasks,” duties employees regard as unreasonable or unnecessary. The research linked these tasks with lower job satisfaction, greater burnout and stronger intentions to leave.
Intentions are not resignations. Employees may remain because they need the income or cannot find another job. These associations also cannot establish that removing a particular task will, by itself, prevent an employee from leaving.
Retention has costs and limits
Replacing an experienced employee involves recruitment, training and the time a new hire needs to learn the business. Colleagues may take on additional work while a position remains vacant.
Those costs become harder to absorb when recruitment is difficult, as we examined in our earlier coverage of smaller incoming workforces. Keeping existing expertise can protect a team’s capacity while employers train new recruits.
Businesses cannot offer every employee unlimited advancement, and another employer may provide an opportunity they cannot match. A retention conversation is still worth having before a resignation forces the discussion into a hurried negotiation over money.
