Gen Z is not disengaged because they are lazy. They are navigating a flooded job market, economic instability, and workplaces that treat them like numbers instead of people. The fix is simpler than most leaders expect: get to know your team one on one, build real human connection, and make people feel seen from day one. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who keeps asking why their best hires do not stick around.
This episode is part of the Retention & Why Top Performers Leave series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…42% of employee turnover is preventable.”
Episode highlights
Why 42% of turnover never had to happen
Gallup interviewed people who had recently left jobs voluntarily. Nearly half said they would have stayed if someone had just talked to them about it. The problem is most leaders are waiting for team members to raise their hand, and team members almost never do. It feels awkward, they are not sure how their manager will react, so they quietly start interviewing. By the time you find out, the decision is already made.
The fix is not a fancier open-door policy. It is proactive, regular check-ins where you are asking the questions before the person reaches their breaking point.
Recognition that actually lands
General praise does not move the needle. “Good job” tells someone almost nothing. Specific recognition does the work. Instead of “great meeting,” try: “The meeting yesterday was tense, a lot of disagreeing opinions, and the way you kept the conversation moving let everyone leave feeling optimistic. That was awesome.”
When a team member hears that, they know you were paying attention. Feeling seen and appreciated is consistently cited in exit interviews as a reason people leave when it is absent. Build specific recognition into the day-to-day, not just the big wins, and people stop wondering whether anyone notices their work.
Constructive feedback as a retention tool
Here is the counterintuitive part: avoiding hard feedback does not protect people, it drives them away. What keeps people is constructive feedback delivered inside a clear message of support.
If someone wants to lead a team one day and you notice a habit that will get in their way, say so. “I know we are working toward you leading this department. I have some feedback I want us to fine-tune because it is going to help you get there.” Now the feedback lands as investment, not criticism.
This matters most in the hard moments. When someone receives disappointing feedback, that is exactly when they need to feel supported. If they only hear the critique and not the “I am in your corner,” that is often the moment they decide to leave.
The reason high performers walk out the door even when they love the team
This one hits out of left field. The culture is good. The team lunches are fun. Recognition is happening. And someone great still quits.
The culprit is almost always a lack of challenge. When a top performer asks for more scope, more responsibility, or a path toward their goal, and gets “let’s talk about it in the next one-on-one” with no follow-up, they notice. By the second time they ask and nothing happens, they are mentally out. By the third time, they may have already interviewed somewhere else.
Lia is speaking from personal experience here. She left multiple roles, in both corporate and small business settings, not because the job was bad but because she asked for more, was told “we’ll look at that,” and never heard back.
How to keep challenge on the table
Do not wait for team members to ask. Proactively check in: do you feel challenged in your work? What would you want to add that moves you toward your goals? If someone says “I don’t know,” you make a suggestion. Tie it to something they have already told you they want, whether that is managing people, leading a project, or owning a new area.
The goal is for every team member to feel like you are holding their goals up and actively looking for opportunities to help them reach them. That makes leaving expensive for them, even if another offer pays more. You are a known commodity in their corner. That is hard to replace.
The three moves, all together
Specific recognition and appreciation, constructive feedback grounded in support, and consistent opportunities for challenging work. These three things in combination are what fuel real retention. They signal to your team: I see you, I am invested in you, and I believe you can grow here. That is what keeps great people from quietly going somewhere else.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 236: What to do when an employee tells you they’re thinking of leaving. When a team member gives you advance notice they may leave, the worst move is writing them off. Lia walks through The Sit Down, a re-engagement conversation that keeps great people invested longer, and explains how to handle the raise or promotion ask that sometimes comes with it. This episode is for any owner, founder, or team lead who wants to stop being blindsided by departures.
- Ep 207: The simple action that keeps your best people from leaving. Retention is not built by perks or promises. It is built by showing up the same way on your worst day as you do on your best. Lia walks through why consistency in your leadership values is the single biggest lever you have over whether your top people stay or go.
- Ep 203: Why top performers leave and the career conversation that keeps them. Top performers leave because they cannot see a future on your team, not because the job was bad. The fix is a regular career conversation, separate from performance reviews, where you ask about bigger-picture goals and then follow up with real opportunities. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who want to stop losing good people before the resignation letter arrives.
- Ep 195: What Gen Z actually wants at work (and how to make them want to stay). Gen Z is not disengaged because they are lazy. They are navigating a flooded job market, economic instability, and workplaces that treat them like numbers instead of people. The fix is simpler than most leaders expect: get to know your team one on one, build real human connection, and make people feel seen from day one. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who keeps asking why their best hires do not stick around.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
Because that is why I have left every single role I left when I was in the corporate world. Small businesses too. Because I said, hey, I volunteered. I see this area that I could lead or build out or grow over here. I’d like to take this on. And I was a 10Xer, A player. And I went to my manager and I said, hey, I’d like to take on a little bit more leadership. And they said, awesome, you’re doing great.
Let me get back to you. And they never got back to me. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant. Through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, and most of all, stress.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes or a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between. Let’s go.
Welcome back to the show. Today, we are diving into employee turnover and how to prevent it, because there’s literally nothing more expensive from a cost and stress perspective than having high turnover on your team, right? I mean, having to retrain people, having to stop and onboard people, interview, the whole process, it sucks. And so we want to be preventing it. And the Gallup organization actually recently reported that 42% of employee turnover is preventable. And I’ll link to the article in my show notes, because this is something that we can actually deal with and get a handle on as managers and team leaders.
But before we dive into that, I want to ask you if you are loving this show to please take a minute to leave a review. It takes like 30 seconds. Just pop into Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you’re listening, and actually leaving a review, not just with stars, but with words too, this helps the podcast app surface the podcast to more people. And here on the show, I am all about making managing easier, hopefully making it the easiest part of your job, because well, dealing with people is hard enough.
So let’s spread the word to more folks who could really use a little bit of the support. All right, back to our topic of employee turnover. Now, the Gallup organization recently reported that 42% of turnover is preventable. Now, what do they mean? That they interviewed folks that have recently voluntarily left their jobs, and 42% of people said, well, yeah, like if someone talked to me about it, I would have stayed. And I got to ask you the question, are you talking to your team members?
Not just waiting for them to come talk to you and saying, hey, I have an open door. If you have a complaint, or if you need something, feel free to come my way. But are you proactively checking in with them all the time? Because when I talk to leaders and business owners, and I work with my clients, one of the biggest kind of aha moments is they realize they’re not regularly checking in with their teams. They’re waiting for them to come, and then they’re surprised.
And they’re frustrated when someone that seemed like they were really happy leaves unexpectedly. And most of the times, our team members will leave unexpectedly. Because it’s a little bit of an awkward conversation, it might make us feel uncomfortable. We don’t know if our manager is going to be okay with us leaving or give us support. So we just quietly look for another job. And we’re leaving our manager and our team leader in this business high and dry.
But this can be prevented. And I wanted to share a couple ways that we can help prevent this. Okay, so first and foremost, I said by proactively talking to our teams. Again, not just saying that I have an open door, you know, let me know if you need anything. Okay, so that’s what we don’t want to do. Instead, we want to do these three things. Number one, recognition and appreciation. Are we recognizing and appreciating their work?
Are we thanking them when they pull extra hours or help someone on board or step up? And this doesn’t mean we have to only thank and appreciate folks when they’ve landed some big thing. But are we creating culture where people feel like, hey, I’m generally appreciated here. I’m not just a cog in the machine. And we’re giving people specific positive feedback. Okay, I’ve talked about this a lot on the show, that when we give positive feedback, we don’t just say good job.
We say, hey, great job running that meeting yesterday, it was really tense, a lot of kind of disagreeing opinions. And the way that you really kept the conversation moving allowed us to find approval. And everyone really feel optimistic by the end. That was awesome. Thank you. See that now I’m like, wow, my manager saw that I was in this hard situation, they appreciated that. Appreciation and recognition is also cited as one of the reasons people leave a lack of feeling appreciated.
So when we build this into our culture in a day to day basis, we’re continually thanking people, they know where they stand, they know that generally things are going well, that is going to prevent attrition and people leaving our teams. The second thing right in terms of feedback is, are we giving folks constructive feedback in a way that shows them we support them? Okay, so we’re not just giving positive feedback and recognition only. We’re doing that a lot.
But we’re also showing team members, hey, I want to bring out the best in you. I’m going to give you little kind of cues here when you’re just almost there, but aren’t quite there so that we can get you to where you want to be. So this comes into play of really understanding the goals of your team members, both short term and long term. You know, let’s say they’re wanting to lead a team one day or to be in charge of running some division.
And you see, oh, this thing’s getting in the way. Say, hey, I know we are working towards you leading this department. And I had a little feedback that, you know, I want us to fine tune because this is going to help you get there. This constructive feedback shows I’m aware of your goals. I have my radar out for those. And I’m helping you achieve those. So this helps people want to stay. This builds loyalty. So we’re not avoiding the constructive feedback.
No, we’re not avoiding giving hard feedback. We’re giving hard feedback in the context of I’m here for you. I support you. I want to help you close any gaps. Okay, so especially if it’s something tough, if it’s something disappointing, if it’s something someone’s really frustrated hearing, they need to know that they have the support more than ever. Because sometimes it’s in those moments where people say, well, screw this. I’m out of here. It’s too hard. I can’t handle it.
Or they feel uncomfortable getting hard feedback, or they really don’t want confrontation. And this is something that’s coming up a lot more and more right now, people being very conflict diverse to where it’s hard to even give a simple kind of minor feedback. So we want to give feedback in the context that, hey, on the whole, things are going good. Or, hey, on the whole, like, I’m really supporting you to get there. Let’s say everything’s not going great.
Okay, but you really want to try with this person. Hey, here’s what I’m willing to invest and how I’m willing to help you get there. Okay, so we give constructive feedback, but it’s grounded in the support. That is a huge way that we help retain people. And we help kind of recognize, like, is this person thinking of leaving? Did you know that I do team workshops on all of the stuff that I talk about on this show with large companies like Google and also with startups and small businesses like marketing agencies, law firms and med spas?
Whether it’s making those feedback conversations a little less awkward, how to support your team through all of the change and uncertainty making us all, well, a little on edge right now, or delegating to empower your team to step up as owners. I come into your teams and give you the tools you need to wrestle with all this tough stuff and feel like you’ve got it handled. Reach out at hello at leahgarvin.com or pass my info along to the decision maker in your company and let’s make all this team stuff easier and a lot more fun.
Now, the third one is, are people being challenged in their work? And this one is one that can really hit you out of left field, is when you give a lot of positive recognition, you are thanking them, you have a great team culture, everyone comes to the happy hours and the lunches and all the cool stuff. But if a team member doesn’t feel challenged, if they feel like they’re not living up their full potential, and Lord knows if they have asked you for more work and you haven’t quite figured out asked you for more work and you haven’t quite figured out where they could be slotted in to take on more scope, that person is thinking of leaving, I guarantee it.
Because that is why I have left every single role I left when I was in the corporate world, small businesses too. Because I said, hey, I volunteered, I see this area that I could lead or build out or grow over here, I’d like to take this on. And I was a 10Xer, A player. And I went to my manager and I said, hey, I’d like to take on a little bit more leadership. And they said, awesome, you’re doing great, let me get back to you.
And they never got back to me. Or they said, yeah, in a couple months, we’ll look at that. And they never got back to me. Well, I’m going to tell you firsthand, when your team member has asked you more than once for more challenging work, for more scope, and they are doing well, and it’s someone that’s worthy of that, okay? Because sometimes you say no, because the person doesn’t have a real sense of, well, they need some support to get there.
If they don’t have a real sense, you give them a yes and. Yes, I love that for you. And let’s do this, this, and this so that you can get there. So you are working towards it either way. But if you just say, yeah, let’s talk about that in our next one-on-one, and you don’t bring it up and you forget, by the second time that person asks you, sure as hell by the third time, that person is looking for another job.
That person is looking for another job, if not has already interviewed for another job. I’m telling you, I’m telling you, because I’ve been there. When people don’t feel challenged, it doesn’t matter how fun the job is, doesn’t matter how cool the team members are. Sometimes, often, it doesn’t even matter how much they’re getting paid. They start to feel like they’re not living up to their full potential. So one of, in my opinion, one of the biggest ways we can prevent high turnover is to always be checking in with our team members proactively, like I said, saying, hey, do you feel challenged in your work?
What would you like to add to this that can really help you get towards your goals? If they say, I don’t know, I guess, then you suggest something, okay? You say, well, you shared with me you have this goal of managing people one day or leading in this area. How about this? And let’s see if it’s too much, we can pull it back. But I really want to make sure you feel like every day, it’s exciting.
And it’s a little bit hard, but not too hard where like you want to give up. So having these conversations, making sure your team members feel like you have your radar out for their success, you are holding their goals up, you know, in the air and looking for opportunities to help them achieve those things, that is what fuels retention. That’s what keeps people, that’s what builds loyalty. Because we know that, wow, in this job, in this situation, in this company, in this team, I can achieve everything I want to.
And I have this manager in my corner to help me get there. That’s expensive for me to leave, right? Even if I’m offered getting paid somewhere else, because it’s, you are now a known commodity that’s going to help them get there. So the combination of one, recognition and appreciation, that is very specific. Two, constructive feedback that’s grounded in support. And three, continually offering people challenging work that helps them live to their full potential. Those are my three best strategies for retaining your top talent.
And right now, it’s so hard. It’s so hard to lose anybody, let alone your great people that you have worked so hard to cultivate. So why not try these things, really make sure people feel supported and seen and appreciated and recognized, and like you are holding up their goals and helping them get there, and they will stay. And remember to please leave a review. If you like this episode, it helps bring it to more people. I am on a mission to help make managing easier for everyone, and sharing a review is a great way to get the word out.
That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why do great employees quit without warning?
Most top performers leave quietly because bringing it up feels awkward. They worry their leader won't be supportive or will make things uncomfortable, so they just start interviewing on the side. Gallup found that 42% of employee turnover is preventable, meaning nearly half of those exits could have been stopped if someone had a real conversation first. The fix is not waiting for team members to come to you. Proactively check in, ask how they are feeling, and make it safe for them to tell you what they actually need.
How do I keep my best employees from leaving?
Three things make the biggest difference. First, give specific recognition regularly, not just after big wins, but for the everyday effort so people know they are seen. Second, deliver constructive feedback in the context of support, tied to their actual goals, so they know you are in their corner. Third, make sure they feel challenged. If a team member has asked for more responsibility and you have not followed through, they are already thinking about leaving. Holding their goals up and actively looking for ways to help them grow is what builds real loyalty.
What happens if I ignore a team member who asks for more responsibility?
If someone asks once and you say you will get back to them and never do, that is a warning sign. By the second time they ask with no real response, they are likely already looking at other jobs. By the third time, they may have already interviewed somewhere else. It does not matter how fun the culture is or how much they are paid. When people feel like they are not living up to their potential, they leave. Give them a clear yes with a path forward, or a yes with conditions, but never just let it drop.
How do I give constructive feedback without making someone want to quit?
Frame the feedback around their goals and your support for them, not just the gap you are pointing out. For example, if someone wants to lead a team one day, tie your feedback directly to that: here is what will help you get there. When hard feedback lands without any context of support, people can shut down or walk out. They need to know that even when you are pointing out something tough, you are still invested in their success. Grounding correction in care is what keeps people engaged instead of defensive or checked out.
Is saying 'my door is always open' enough to prevent turnover?
No. Telling your team your door is open puts the entire burden on them to come forward, and most people will not. They worry it will be awkward, or that you will not react well. Instead, you need to be the one initiating check-ins. Ask directly whether they feel challenged, whether they are working toward the goals they care about, and what you can do to help them get there. Proactive conversations are what surface problems before someone quietly starts their job search.