Here’s a reality check: The average voluntary turnover rate in the U.S. sits at 13.5% as of 2025, and 51% of U.S. employees, roughly 1 in 2 workers, are either actively searching for or watching for new job opportunities. That’s not just a statistic. That’s half your workforce with one foot out the door.
But here’s what makes this even more concerning: most of this turnover is preventable. Research shows that roughly 75% of voluntary employee turnover can actually be avoided.
The question isn’t whether employees are leaving—it’s why they’re leaving, and what you can do about it before your best talent walks out the door.
Before we dive into solutions, let’s talk numbers. Studies estimate that replacing an employee can cost about 33% of their annual salary. For a mid-level employee earning $60,000, that’s nearly $20,000 down the drain—and that’s just the direct costs.
The real damage? Lost productivity, decreased team morale, knowledge gaps, and the strain on remaining employees who have to pick up the slack while you scramble to fill the position.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. A staggering 32.4% of individuals who left a position within the past year cited a toxic or negative workplace as one of their reasons for resigning, making it the most commonly reported factor.
Here’s the kicker: Only 15.3% of employers surveyed thought that employees had left due to a toxic workplace environment.
Read that again. Leadership is either completely unaware of the toxicity or unwilling to address it.
What does a toxic workplace look like in practice?
What HR Can Do: Conduct anonymous culture audits quarterly. Use pulse surveys to gauge the real temperature of your workplace. But here’s the critical part—you must act on the feedback. Employees stop giving honest feedback when they see it disappear into a void.
Create clear channels for reporting toxic behavior with guaranteed protection from retaliation. Train managers on recognizing and addressing toxic dynamics before they become resignation catalysts.
You’ve heard this before, and it’s still true. Gallup research consistently finds that 50% of employees who quit do so because of their manager.
The second most frequent factor among job quitters was poor company leadership, and the third most frequent was conflict with a manager or supervisor. Combined, these paint a clear picture: employees aren’t quitting jobs—they’re quitting bad leadership.
Bad managers manifest in several ways:
Real-World Example: Sarah, a marketing specialist, consistently exceeded her targets for 18 months. Her manager took credit for her campaigns in leadership meetings and never acknowledged her contributions. When a competitor offered her 10% less than her current salary but with a manager who valued transparency and recognition, she left without hesitation.
What HR Can Do: Invest heavily in leadership development—not just once during onboarding, but continuously. Train managers on:
Implement 360-degree feedback so managers understand how their leadership style impacts retention. Make management effectiveness a key metric in performance reviews, not just business outcomes.
Yes, money matters. While it’s not the only reason employees leave, it’s still foundational. Among the top reasons cited for leaving, pay/benefits accounts for 11% of departures.
But here’s what’s changed: employees are smarter about total compensation. They’re not just looking at salary—they’re evaluating:
What HR Can Do: Conduct regular compensation benchmarking against industry standards. Use tools like Engagedly to track pay equity across departments, ensuring you’re competitive not just at hiring but throughout employment.
Be transparent about pay structures. Salary secrecy breeds resentment. Create clear career ladders that show employees exactly what they need to do to reach the next compensation level.
Don’t wait for annual reviews to adjust compensation. If someone’s role has expanded or they’ve taken on additional responsibilities, adjust their pay accordingly—before they start interviewing elsewhere.
Research shows that 43% of employees planning to leave prioritize training and development, compared to just 31% who intend to stay long-term.
When employees feel stuck, they leave. It’s that simple.
Career stagnation looks like:
What HR Can Do: Create Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for every employee—not just high potentials. Use performance management platforms like Engagedly to track skill development, identify learning opportunities, and align career goals with business needs.
Implement job rotation programs, cross-functional projects, and lateral moves that keep work engaging. Sometimes career growth isn’t just about climbing up—it’s about expanding horizontally to build diverse skills.
Establish mentorship programs that connect junior employees with senior leaders. The ROI? Higher engagement, better succession planning, and employees who feel invested in.
Burnout rates are now at a record high of 70% and nearly half of U.S. workers are suffering from mental health issues.
This isn’t just about being busy. Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, and it’s driving employees out the door faster than almost anything else.
Warning signs include:
What HR Can Do: Move beyond offering an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) that nobody uses. Create a culture where taking time off is encouraged, not just permitted.
Implement mandatory “unplug” policies. Some companies are experimenting with “no meeting Fridays” or blocking out focus time in calendars company-wide.
Train managers to spot burnout symptoms early. Create workload distribution visibility so leadership can see when teams are consistently overextended.
Most importantly: model the behavior from the top. If your executives are sending emails at midnight and working weekends, your policies around work-life balance are just performative.
Engagement and culture accounts for 37% of reasons employees cite for leaving, the highest category.
Recognition isn’t about pizza parties or generic “employee of the month” plaques. It’s about feeling seen, valued, and appreciated for your specific contributions.
Employees leave when:
What HR Can Do: Build recognition into your daily operations, not just annual reviews. Use continuous performance management systems that enable peer-to-peer recognition, manager kudos, and linking achievements to company objectives.
Create multiple recognition channels:
The key is specificity. “Great job” means nothing. “Your analysis of the Q3 data revealed a trend we hadn’t noticed, which directly led to a 15% increase in customer retention” means everything.
The pandemic permanently shifted expectations. Pew Research Center reports that 75 percent of adults in jobs that can be done from home are working remotely at least some of the time.
Rigid return-to-office mandates are causing resignations. Employees have proven they can be productive remotely, and many are unwilling to give up the benefits:
What HR Can Do: Get granular about flexibility needs. Not every role can be fully remote, but most can offer some flexibility. Options include:
Nearly 55 percent of employees said they’d be more likely to stay with an employer that offered flextime. This isn’t a perk anymore—it’s a retention strategy.
Today’s workforce, especially younger generations, wants their work to matter. They want to work for companies whose values align with their own.
Employees leave when:
What HR Can Do: Be authentic about your mission. If your company exists to make money, own it—but find ways to create meaning within that framework through customer impact, innovation, or team development.
Regularly communicate how individual contributions connect to larger goals. Use town halls, internal newsletters, and one-on-ones to draw those connections explicitly.
Create opportunities for employees to engage in work that aligns with their values—whether that’s volunteering initiatives, sustainability projects, or innovation labs working on meaningful problems.
Here’s something that should terrify every HR leader: U.S. employee engagement reached an 11-year low, indicating that many workers feel disconnected even in their new roles.
We’ve moved from the Great Resignation to what experts are calling the “Great Detachment”—employees aren’t necessarily leaving, but they’re mentally checked out. This is arguably worse because:
By the time you’re conducting an exit interview, it’s too late. Stay interviews—regular conversations with current employees about what keeps them engaged and what might cause them to leave—are proactive retention tools.
Ask questions like:
Leverage HR analytics to identify patterns in turnover. Look at:
Modern platforms like Engagedly provide predictive analytics that can flag potential flight risks based on engagement scores, performance trends, and other signals—giving you time to intervene.
Make retention a key metric in manager performance reviews. Track:
Managers with consistently high turnover should receive additional support, or if cultural problems persist, be moved out of leadership positions.
Map out clear career progression frameworks for every role in your organization. Employees should be able to answer:
Without clear growth pathways, employees are likely to look elsewhere for career advancement. Build a learning culture through:
29% of survey respondents shared they quit a job within 90 days of starting. That’s nearly a third of new hires not making it past the first quarter.
Your onboarding is either a retention tool or a resignation catalyst. Invest in:
Why do employees leave their jobs? Organizations fail to meet their evolving needs for respect, growth, flexibility, recognition, and purpose.
The companies that win the talent war in 2025 and beyond won’t be the ones with the flashiest perks or the highest salaries (though competitive compensation is table stakes). They’ll be the ones that:
Given that approximately 42% of turnover is viewed as preventable by the employees themselves, there’s an enormous opportunity for HR intervention.
The question is: Will you wait until your best employees hand in their resignations, or will you act now to build the kind of workplace people want to stay in?
Your turnover rate is a report card on your organizational health. What grade are you currently getting?
