Calcluate your retention analytics to understand your attrition blindspots and retain top talent.
Start now
Retention strategies that work: What high-performers really want in 2025
Date created
June 2, 2025
Last updated:
June 16, 2025
|
5 min read
Table of Content
Article summary
- Retention is not about keeping everyone — it's about keeping the right people, for the right reasons, by aligning roles with purpose, growth, and impact.
- Young talent and top performers will leave if they don’t see meaningful development and contribution opportunities — challenge them, engage them, and most importantly, listen.
- Leaders need support, too; retaining them means investing in their growth, energy, and peer connection — not just their out
Retention isn’t just about numbers. It’s about trust, growth, and culture — a direct reflection of how well you lead, develop, and support your people. And in a market where top performers are often the first to leave, HR leaders must shift their focus from attrition rates to intentional, strategic talent stewardship.
When development is generic, leadership support is lacking, or internal mobility stalls, your best talent doesn’t wait — they walk. In this climate, traditional retention tactics aren’t enough.
The organizations that will win in the future of work are the ones building cultures where the right people choose to stay — and grow. That requires a new kind of leadership: one that’s human-centered and deeply invested in people as a long-term advantage, not a short-term metric.
In this interview, we speak with Jennifer McClure, CEO of Unbridled Talent and Chief Excitement Officer of DisruptHR, who brings a bold, human-centered perspective to what truly drives retention today. From managing low performers to developing future-ready leaders, Jennifer challenges HR to move beyond checklists and start leading with clarity, care, and courage.
What is a healthy talent retention rate, in your view?
In my opinion, a healthy retention rate depends on the industry, the role, and the company’s stage of growth. Rather than chasing a magic number, I encourage leaders to focus on what’s behind the data.
Are your best people staying? Are you having meaningful stay conversations before they become exit interviews?
Retention should be a reflection of a company's culture, leadership, and growth opportunities, not just a KPI. It’s not about holding onto everyone. It’s about keeping the right people for the right reasons.
How do you address ongoing performance challenges in a way that supports both the individual and the team?
First, we need to be honest: keeping low performers in roles where they can’t thrive hurts everyone, including them. The most effective way to prevent that is to create a culture of clarity, accountability, and care.
It starts with setting clear expectations and providing regular, real-time feedback. Don’t wait for annual reviews. If someone is struggling, coach them early. Support them with the tools and feedback they need, but don’t send the wrong message by tolerating underperformance for too long. That sends a message to your high performers that excellence doesn’t matter.
What are some effective strategies to retain young talent?
The next generation of talent isn’t afraid to leave a job that doesn’t align with their values or ambitions, and that’s not a problem to solve. It’s a wake-up call for leaders to lead differently.
Retaining young talent requires more than perks or in-office ping-pong tables. They want growth, purpose, and leaders who invest in their development. Give them stretch assignments, opportunities to contribute, and a seat at the table — even if they’re early in their careers. Most of all, listen. They’re not looking for lifelong loyalty. They’re looking to have a meaningful impact.
How can organizations best retain leaders?
By treating them like people, not just producers of results.
Too often, we assume leaders don’t need support because they’ve “made it.” But leadership is hard, especially in today’s complex environment. If you want to retain your best leaders, invest in their growth, give them peers to learn from, and create space for honest conversations. Ask them what’s energizing them — and what’s not. Leaders, just like employees at all levels, stay when they feel trusted, challenged, and seen.
What are the key actions HR and L&D managers can take to retain top talent?
Start by knowing who your critical talent actually is — and why.
Then, partner with leaders across the business to create experiences that challenge, engage, and retain them. Top talent wants to learn, to be challenged, and to contribute to something that matters. HR and L&D can play a pivotal role by ensuring development is personalized, not one-size-fits-all, and by advocating for career pathing that goes beyond promotions. If you’re not prioritizing internal mobility, you’re already at risk of losing your best people.
What are the main factors influencing retention rates in today’s workforce?
Clarity, culture, connection, and growth.
People want to know what’s expected of them, how their work connects to something bigger, and whether their leaders genuinely care. If those things are missing, no amount of compensation will keep them. We’re in a trust economy now. Retention isn’t just about engagement scores. It’s about whether people feel safe, supported, and seen.
What’s your prediction for the future of HR? Where do you see the field heading in the next 5 to 10 years?
We’re already seeing the shift, but the HR leaders who will thrive in the next decade won’t just be policy makers. They’ll be changemakers.
I believe the future of HR is transformational, not transactional. We need bold, business-minded, human-centered HR leaders who are ready to lead through disruption — not just react to it. HR must absolutely play a central role in shaping strategy, culture, and capability in the future of work. The question is: are we as HR leaders ready to step into that power?
Key takeaways for HR leaders:
- Stop chasing a benchmark retention rate — focus instead on who is staying and why.
- Create clarity and accountability early to avoid long-term low performance.
- Design personalized development paths and stretch opportunities for high-potential talent.
- Invest in leadership support — not just leadership training — to retain your top managers.
- Prioritize internal mobility to keep critical talent engaged and growing within the company.
Ready to upskill your people & transform your business?
We offer a scalable employee training solution. It lets you continuously upskill your people.
Book a callThe Employee Retention Tool
.webp)
No items found.
Ready to upskill your people and transform your business?
Book a meeting.webp)
Related articles
Review by:
Jeroen Kraaijenbrink: How organizations can overcome the honesty gap
Senior leadership and boardroom teams invest heavily in commercial strategies to win market shares. Yet the most important and honest information driving strategy circulates in teams underneath, never making it to the table where decisions are made.Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, Executive Coach and Strategy Consultant at Kraaijenbrink Advisory, has spent years working on what he calls the honesty gap. We sat down with him to understand what the honesty gap actually is, where it lives in organizations, and why fixing it requires a leadership shift.How do you define the honesty gap?There's a narrow definition and a broad one. The broad one is: we have created organizations and systems where it's barely possible to be honest to yourself, about yourself, and honest to other people.Honesty isn't just lying. It's integrity, being authentically connected to other people and being aware of your own emotions and your own biases.The honesty gap, in a narrow sense, is the fact that truth and information don’t travel vertically upwards in a company. It's often hard to speak openly to your manager because it’s become rational not to. Many people have the experience: 'I've tried it once but then I was punished for it, or was ignored, so let it be, never mind.' That's the fascinating part: it's not good for people, it's not good for organizations and yet we somehow keep this system intact.Is it less about individual dishonesty and more about a collective culture?A lot of the most important information going through your company is between people and in conversations. You need to find a way to have an honest conversation, where the things that matter get on the meeting table, not just in the informal circuit. And I think that's pretty rare.A more systematic definition is that we're not using the collective intelligence of a company enough. We can radically improve it because we’ve made it rational to hide the truth and to keep things to yourself. A lot of it may not be intentional, but the very fact that someone is in a position above you automatically creates this tension: 'What do I show? What don't I show? Because my next performance appraisal is coming up.'Where does the honesty gap typically show up first, and who owns the problem?It starts with leaders. Solving it needs one leader at the top, the CEO at least, being open and reflective enough to admit that there is an honesty gap and that they are part of it. That's the self-reflection you need for any improvement and any change. Like in coaching: you need to be aware that there is stuff to improve. You don't need to be a perfect leader, but you need to be open enough to admit that there is an issue.You talk about the 'persona trap', what is that?You're stuck in a persona where you perform in a certain way within your company. You have a role, a position, a reputation, and that locks you into specific behaviors. The worse the match between who you are as a person and how you need to show up in your organization, the more inner conflict that’s created. Especially at the top, it’s a problem for many executives. They're supposed to be the people who know it all and be decisive. While if you're honest, you don't necessarily know everything, you’re uncertain and have anxieties.The inner core of the honesty gap is breaking the performance, breaking the acting you feel you must do. If you've put yourself in a role of being the strong, decisive, number-oriented leader, that's how you have to behave. But most people don't feel very comfortable in that kind of role because it's not who they are.Can you fix the honesty gap through individual coaching alone or does the system have to change?Part of it is a personal change, part of it is a system change. You can be on your own and be very authentic, but if the system doesn't change at all, you’ll struggle to break the honesty gap.What you need to do is work on the people, the culture, and the system. Ideally that has to include the top, because otherwise it stays at the level of the person being coached. If it's a team lead or a mid-manager, that person can partly create an island in the organization, a safe space for their team and their department. But still, the appraisal systems, objectives, and culture are company-wide. Why is this so hard to shift, even when leaders recognize the problem?We have normalized this idea that you have to be strategic in what you tell and what you show. You have to show up in a certain role at work. It's also the result of how we have separated work from life, which is a very unnatural thing. It's from the industrial age, because for any other species, work is life. But now there’s a split between work, with all the routines in companies, and then your private life. There's just one you, you're the same person at home as you are at work. The good news is that the honesty gap can be closed. While many companies have unintentionally created environments where people hesitate to speak openly, organizations prioritizing trust, authenticity, and psychological safety can unlock a competitive advantage. When employees feel safe to share concerns, ideas, and perspectives, collective intelligence grows, decision-making improves, and stronger relationships emerge across every level of the business.
%2520(1).webp)
Ready to drive impact together?
Close skill gaps, accelerate growth, and future-proof your workforce.
