With so many headlines about high unemployment, it’s not surprising that employers feel complacent about employees not wanting to leave. But not paying attention to your flight risks could prove difficult once the job market starts to recover, says Bharat Siyani. 

Staff retention strategies aren’t a top priority right now. That’s what I’m hearing from some employers at the moment, and I do understand where they’re coming from.

Job vacancies have sunk to a five-year low, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

As a result, workers are “job-hugging”: resignation rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the pandemic began.

The upshot is that the perceived risk of employees “flying off” in the near future is relatively low.

It also means that employers, whose running costs are rising and who are having to choose between competing priorities, new workers’ rights and the rise of AI, are devoting less time and resources to employee retention strategies.

Flight risk still stands

But putting flight risk prevention on the back burner is a mistake. For one, employers who don’t act now to keep staff content and engaged risk seeing a mass staff exodus as soon as the job market starts to recover.

When this happens, there is unlikely to be enough cash in the coffers to simultaneously cover panic pay rises for every top performer who’s considering fleeing the nest. Prevention is therefore the best medicine.

For another, the same strategies that reduce employee turnover also improve employee engagement and performance. Businesses need to prioritise these policies if they wish staff to not only keep turning up at their desks but also perform well whilst they’re there.

So what should HR teams do now to ground their future flight risks, beyond making sure staff are paid fairly?

Hire right

Preventing turnover starts as early as the hiring process. If new hires don’t share the company’s values, they’re unlikely to stay put for long.

Investing more time into finding the right talent and, crucially, hiring for ‘value fit’ as well as ‘skill fit’ can prevent this from happening.

It will enable employers to build teams of people who share the company’s ethos and are therefore more likely to be content in their roles and stay in them for longer.

Give staff space to grow

A 2025 report from Owl Labs found that a lack of career progression is among employees’ top workplace concerns.

A Gallup study also found that organisations that strategically invest in staff development are twice as likely to retain their employees, compared to those that don’t. Helping staff to grow should therefore be a “must-do” for businesses looking to reduce their future turnover.

Managers should work with staff to set clear goals that align with their career aspirations and company requirements. Progress towards these goals should be discussed regularly during one-to-ones, along with what support is needed to reach them.

This might include targeted training and mentorship, as well as exposure to new projects or tasks that allow employees to practice new skills.

In certain industries, such as retail and hospitality, this might involve putting workers on formal development programmes like a management track.

It could also entail offering a team member a role in a different department, if the position would better serve their career goals and suit the needs of the business.

Train managers

We all know that if you have a good manager, you’re likely to feel happier at work and thus will probably stay in the role for longer. Research also shows that workers who feel well supported by their line manager are over three times more likely to feel engaged.

However, one in five line managers say they received no training before taking on the role, and around the same number say they’ve never been trained to handle tricky workplace situations.

This lack of training could stymie line managers’ ability to support their direct reports, and this has consequences for employee wellbeing and engagement and, crucially, retention.

Employers must close this line management training gap if they wish to unlock the full power of their line managers and create a working environment that staff want to be part of long-term.

Make work sustainable

Two-thirds of UK workers don’t use their full annual leave allowance, and over half of UK employees (57%) work whilst on holiday, according to our research at Breathe HR.

Plus, eight in ten professionals in the UK report working extra hours all or some of the time. These habits are a recipe for disengagement at best and burnout at worst. And employees who feel this way are unlikely to stick around in roles for long.

Employers can prevent this from happening and protect employee wellbeing by actively encouraging staff to switch off outside work hours and use their full annual leave allowance.

Alongside this, managers should also keep an eye on team members’ workloads and ensure they remain manageable, so staff genuinely feel able to clock off at a reasonable time and take leave. The result will be more productive and engaged workers who stay in roles for longer.

Offer staff greater flexibility

More than a million UK workers left jobs last year due to a lack of flexibility, according to research from the CIPD. So employers who wish to up their retention rates should consider how they could offer staff greater flexibility.

This should be in addition to considering workers’ individual requests for flexible working, which employers have a legal responsibility to respond to.

The level and type of flexibility you can offer will ultimately depend on the needs of your organisation. For certain office-based roles, this might involve introducing a formal hybrid working or flexible working hours policy.

For shift-based organisations, this could look like giving staff more choice over their shifts. Workforce management software can help firms do this. Organisations need to find the form of flexibility that suits the needs of both the business and workers alike.

By offering strong opportunities for career progression, greater flexibility, hiring for value fit, cultivating supportive managers, and encouraging sustainable work habits, employers will be able to create working environments where staff feel happy, engaged and want to stay, even after the job market recovers.

 

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