Organisations operate most effectively when staff turnover is low, and retention strategies help reduce the cost and impact of people leaving. HR professionals play a key role in understanding why employees leave, and devising initiatives that reduce turnover and increase employee retention.

This guide outlines methods of determining why an employee might leave (outlining the meaning of employee retention) and suggests ways to improve retention through an effective strategy. The guide also links to practical tools to help develop and review a retention strategy.

The close relationship between retention and turnover means the two are often considered together.

Turnover is the proportion of employees leaving an organisation within a set period. High turnover rates can be costly in terms of recruitment, training and loss of knowledge. Calculating the cost of turnover can be useful to understand the scale of the issue and supports the business case for improving retention. The CIPD Turnover and Retention factsheet outlines how to calculate turnover.

When developing retention strategies, organisations are typically more interested in tackling the reasons for voluntary turnover (ie when an employee resigns) than involuntary turnover (eg dismissal due to redundancy), as they have less control over voluntary reasons.

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