How Preventable is Employee Turnover?
Employee turnover isn’t inevitable; it continues to be driven by preventable reasons that organizations can address, especially career development.
Preventable turnover driven by career stagnation, work-life balance issues, and management failures accounted for 63 percent of all job exits in 2024, according to the Work Institute’s 2025 Retention Report: Employee Retention Truths in Today’s Workplace. The quit rate—a measure of voluntary turnover—has declined to its lowest levels in recent years in 2024, with an average of 3.3 million worker quits each month. Despite this, around 35 to 40 million employees are likely to quit in 2025.
“Retention is not an accident. It is the result of deliberate choices,” the report said. “High-retention organizations embrace accountability, listen to their workforce, and act decisively to address systemic challenges. As turnover costs rise and workforce mobility persists, employers have a critical choice to either invest in their people or risk falling behind in a competitive labor market.”
The Work Institute conservatively estimated that the financial impact of turnover is 33 percent of an employee’s base pay, with labor shortages and competition for talent amplifying those costs. This means replacing an employee who earns $50,000 a year could cost the organization $16,500 or more in 2025. First-year turnover is the most challenging—as much as 40 percent of overall employee turnover occurs within the first year of employment, delivering minimal return on investment for the organization’s recruitment and onboarding costs.
“This makes proactive retention efforts not only a strategic advantage but also a financial necessity,” the report said.
The report analyzed tens of thousands of exit interviews across various industries to assess current workplace dynamics, and it identified a few key findings.
Career Development Over All
People leave their jobs for a wide variety of reasons, but a lack of career growth opportunities, inadequate career progression, or insufficient professional development was cited as the reason for leaving by 18.9 percent of quitters in 2024. This factor has shown a slight decline in 2024 compared to previous years, suggesting that some organizations addressed their career growth opportunity issues, but it remained a critical turnover driver, the report said.
Only 14 percent of leaders surveyed for the report strongly agreed that they provide effective career development opportunities for employees. Significant gaps in career development include:
Limited internal mobility. Employees cited a lack of visible and accessible internal career opportunities as a major frustration that could push them to leave.
Insufficient professional development. Organizations that lack robust training programs, leadership guidance, and skill-building opportunities can leave employees frustrated about reaching their potential.
Misaligned aspirations and roles. A lack of communication between employees and managers about career goals and capabilities creates dissatisfaction and disengagement.
“Employees increasingly prioritize roles that offer clear growth trajectories and meaningful development opportunities,” the report said. “As workforce expectations evolve, the ability to provide these elements is no longer a differentiator but a baseline requirement for retention of the emerging workforce. Failure to address career-related concerns creates a ripple effect in loss of institutional knowledge, increased recruitment costs, and diminished employee engagement among remaining team members.”
Of people who left their jobs because of career development issues, more than 5 percent left to pursue a different career, nearly 5 percent to get a promotion, 3.5 percent to go back to school, and 2.5 percent for career development.
Managers (Really) Matter
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 Report found that engaged managers lead to stronger team engagement and less burnout. Only 27 percent of managers are currently engaged, however, with competing demands, workplace stressors, and a lack of professional development hitting them hard. For employee retention, this is a big problem.
In 2024, 9.7 percent of employee turnover was directly attributed to management issues, a hike from 7.4 percent in 2022, reflecting the growing strain on managerial effectiveness, the Work Institute report found. Exit interviews consistently cited poor professional behavior, a lack of support, and ineffective communication from managers.
The managers are not all right.
— Security Management (@SecMgmtMag) April 24, 2025
Global employee engagement dropped in 2024. The primary cause was a decrease in manager engagement, with managers struggling to find a balance between executive demands and employee expectations. https://t.co/ftvfGTRP6a
“Recent research indicates managers are asked to take on an ever-expanding array of responsibilities that range from administrative tasks to the implementation of organizational change initiatives,” the report said. “While these responsibilities are often critical, they reduce the time available for managers to build relationships with their teams, provide coaching, and offer meaningful support.”
The report recommended that organizations pursue actionable solutions to empower managers and address the root causes of engagement issues, including:
Reduce non-leadership responsibilities. Analyze managers’ workloads and offload administrative or non-critical tasks.
Provide professionalism and leadership training. This echoed recommendations from Gallup, which strongly recommended giving managers the leadership skills they need to feel more comfortable coaching and developing employees.
Analyze span of control. Do managers oversee too many direct reports? Optimize team sizes to ensure employees get individualized attention and support from managers.
Keep Assessments Proactive
The report strongly recommends leveraging stay interviews—like an exit interview but for retention—to get a better picture of employees’ career aspirations, challenges, and concerns.
“Stay interview strategies identify and address potential issues before employees consider external opportunities,” the report said. “Many organizations find external stay interviews a more effective tool to uncover employee career concerns.”
Stay interviews help organizations build a culture of trust and mitigate emerging turnover risks. Employees are also likely to feel more valued when they see their feedback leads to meaningful changes, the report said. This does require the organization to actually take action, though, and demonstrate responsiveness to employees by openly sharing action plans and communicating how their feedback drove improvements.
Exit interviews are also helpful. “Exit interviews provide invaluable insights into the conditions, behaviors, and decisions that prompt employees to leave,” the report explained. “However, their true value lies in their predictive power. By analyzing trends and recurring themes, organizations can anticipate and mitigate similar risks for the remaining workforce.”
