What the research shows about why people leave, what makes them stay, and why most companies get retention wrong.
We don't conduct primary academic research. We read it, synthesize it, and figure out how to apply it.
The insights on this site come from established sources: Gallup's workplace research, SHRM's turnover cost studies, the Work Institute's retention reports, and peer-reviewed neuroscience on manager behavior and employee decision-making.
Our contribution is translating that research into something managers can actually do. Daily behaviors. Early warning signals. Interventions that work before it's too late.
The replacement cost of an employee ranges from 50% to 200% of their annual salary, depending on role complexity. Most companies track turnover rate but not turnover cost. The difference matters.
Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. The research is clear: people don't leave companies, they leave managers. But most manager training focuses on performance reviews and goal-setting, not the daily behaviors that determine whether someone stays or goes.
Most voluntary turnover is preventable. Employees who leave cite reasons their managers could have addressed: career development stalls, poor communication, feeling unheard. The problem isn't that people leave. It's that they decide to leave weeks or months before anyone notices.
Companies that conduct layoffs typically see 15-25% additional voluntary turnover in the following 12 months. The people who survive the cut often leave anyway. Survivors see how the company treats people and update their own risk calculations.
The brain science behind why annual surveys fail and daily check-ins work. Why vulnerability builds trust. Why managers who ask questions retain more people than managers who give answers.
Detailed analysis applying this research to specific problems:
The 67-day window between deciding to leave and resigning. What happens in those 67 days, and why most managers miss it entirely.
Why your best people leave after layoffs. The psychology of survivor guilt and how it drives voluntary attrition.
Why managers are your biggest retention risk and your best retention tool. The behaviors that matter and the signals that predict departure.
The scale of employee turnover globally and why traditional approaches fail. A framework for thinking about retention as a system problem, not an individual problem.
The brain science behind why people stay or leave. How managers can use neuroscience principles in daily interactions to build the kind of environment where good people want to remain.
We recommend these primary sources for anyone wanting to go deeper:
Annual research on employee engagement, manager impact, and workplace trends.
Methodology for calculating true replacement costs.
Annual analysis of why employees leave and what's preventable.
Marcus Buckingham's research on manager behaviors that drive retention.
Understanding the research is step one. Applying it is harder. The CLOVER Framework translates research into daily manager behaviors. The Clover ERA platform surfaces early warning signals and tracks whether interventions work.