As an HR or C-Suite leader, you know the pain of voluntary turnover. But to make the business case for new solutions, we must be blunt about the real-world cost.
The data is staggering. Research from Gallup shows that the cost to replace a single employee is not just a recruiter's fee—it's a black hole of lost productivity, institutional knowledge, and team morale. The total cost is estimated to be:
For an employee earning €50,000, that’s a €25,000 to €100,000 loss. No organisation can afford to ignore that.
We've spent decades focusing on the classic "push" factors. But in the hybrid era, a new, insidious culprit is hiding in plain sight: your technology.
The classic reasons employees leave still hold true. Research from organisations like the Work Institute consistently shows that people quit over:
But in the new world of work, a powerful "push" factor has emerged: Workplace Friction.
A 2024 Gartner study found that high performers' intent to stay was 16% lower at companies with strict return-to-office mandates. Employees don't resist the office; they resist a bad experience. Think about it. An employee decides to commute in for collaboration. They arrive to find no desks, hunt for 20 minutes for a meeting room, and discover their team isn't even in. That "wasted commute" creates a profound sense of frustration.
This is where the promise of flexibility fails.
Your company culture may promise flexibility, but it's your technology stack that actually delivers it. If that delivery is clunky, frustrating, or chaotic, your tech isn't just a tool—it's a retention problem. But identifying which part of your technology is failing is the hard part. The problem isn't one single tool; it's the entire, fragmented digital experience. To fix this, HR and IT leaders must stop thinking about tech in silos and start auditing it from the employee's perspective.
To help you do exactly that, we've developed an easy framework you can use to audit your complete retention tech stack. This plan is designed to pinpoint the exact friction that's costing you talent.
A high-retention tech stack is built on five key pillars. You can't just implement one; they must work in harmony.
If the answer to this last question is no, you are failing to deliver on the promise of flexibility. You are creating daily, low-grade frustration that pushes your best people to your competitors.
Auditing all five pillars can feel overwhelming, which is why we're here to offer a 5 step practical plan to help with your retention goals - starting with the fastest and most tangible win.
By starting with the most tangible, daily friction, you earn the trust and engagement needed to tackle the deeper, long-term cultural challenges. Before you invest another euro in a top-down engagement program, look at the ground-level experience. Are you making it easy for your employees to simply... show up and do their best work?