Why Are My Employees Leaving—and What Can I Do About It?

If you’ve ever thought, “Oh no, time to restart the hiring process again?” you’re not alone. Between posting the role, reviewing applications and onboarding, staff turnover can feel like a drain on your time and energy.

But what if the issue isn’t just hiring—it’s what happens after someone joins your team?

Retention isn’t just about keeping people in the same job forever; it’s about creating an environment where people want to stay, grow, and contribute meaningfully while they’re here.

Investing in employee retention is a best practice at highly successful organizations in all sectors. Strategic efforts to increase employee retention have shown positive progress to keep full-time permanent employees at the State of Minnesota for at least two years.

State employees tend to build long careers in public service, but strong retention doesn’t happen automatically. Leaders have influence over many parts of the employee experience: whether employees feel valued, whether they can see opportunities ahead, whether their skills continue to grow and whether someone is invested in helping them get there.

That’s where employee development becomes a retention strategy.

Employee Development As a Retention Strategy

For some leaders, that idea may feel counterintuitive. You may have heard, or thought, things like:

  • “If they learn new skills, they’ll just become more marketable somewhere else.”
  • “If I connect them with mentor and broader opportunities, they may get recruited away.”
  • “Why should I help prepare someone for their next job when I need them in this one?”
  • “What if I put all this time into developing them and they leave anyway?”

However, these are not what employees point to when they leave their role. Instead, employees report leaving due to management practices, lack of promotional opportunities or career advancement, salary/pay, organizational culture and quality of supervision.

So, what else could be true?

  • When you trust employees to use what they learned, seek out their expertise, and rely on them in new ways, you signal that their growth matters.
  • Mentors, stretch assignments, and broader connections can help employees build skills while also helping them see and experience more possibilities for their future within State service.
  • As employees grow, leaders may be able to delegate more day-to-day problem solving and spend more time on building relationships and strategic work.
  • Supporting someone’s development doesn’t necessarily prepare them to leave. It may give them more reasons, and pathways, to stay.
  • Sometimes development helps an employee discover that a different role is a better fit. Retention at all costs isn’t the goal. Helping someone find work that better aligns with their strengths, interests, values and goals can be a positive outcome for the employee, the team, and the State of Minnesota.
  • When an employee is ready for something different, a supportive relationship can lead to earlier, more honest career conversations, better knowledge transfer, and a stronger professional relationship that may continue long after they leave the team.

In fact, Minnesota exit survey data also provides insight into what long term employees most appreciated about working for the state. Most frequently, people list interesting and challenging job duties, the opportunity to serve the public, relationships with coworkers, flexible work schedules, the ability to telework, and the opportunity to be part of the State’s mission and activities.

Not every factor affecting retention is within a leader’s control. But several of the things’ employees value can be influenced by the everyday employee experience: meaningful work, strong relationships, flexibility where possible, connection to mission, trust, and opportunities to grow.

With this in mind, using development as a retention strategy requires us to think more broadly about what “development” actually means.

Growth goes way beyond attending training

There is a misconception that development only occurs when an individual receives a promotion or attends formal training. Others may associate employee development primarily with addressing performance concerns.

But those definitions are too narrow to capture all the ways employees can grow and develop.

Growth can mean building a new skill, deepening expertise, gaining confidence, strengthening relationships, practicing better judgment, taking on greater responsibility or even learning how to work in a healthier and more sustainable way.

Growth can happen when you:

  • Ask an employee to lead a meeting
  • Give someone ownership of a small, low risk project, that allows them ‘stretch’
  • Encourage technical or interpersonal skill building
  • Coach communication, problem-solving or decision-making
  • Give an employee room to make decisions within appropriate boundaries
  • Help someone build confidence
  • Support an employee in setting healthier boundaries or improving work-life balance
  • Connect someone with a mentor or a peer from another team or agency
  • Encourage participation in a community of practice (CoP) or employee resource group (ERG)
  • Invite someone to share their expertise or teach what they know to others
  • Provide flexibility whenever possible

Sometimes growth is tangible—a new responsibility, skill or role. Other times, it is quieter: an employee asks a better question, handles a difficult conversation differently, makes a decision without second-guessing or teaches someone else something they once needed help learning themselves.

Development does not have to be separate from the work.

A stretch assignment, a coaching conversation, a new responsibility, or an opportunity to share expertise can all build capability while still accomplishing the work of your team.

That means leaders can create simple, meaningful opportunities for growth in the way they assign work, give feedback, build connections, and decide to step back and let someone else take the lead.

Simple ways to start (without overhauling everything)

Employee development doesn’t always require a large budget, a formal training program or hours away from the job.

Try one or two of these to start:

  • Ask better questions and actively listen. Try asking, “What do you want to learn next?” or “What would growth look like for you this year?”
  • Use more informal coaching. Look for small, frequent opportunities to provide feedback, encouragement, context and support rather than waiting for formal development conversations.
  • Try a micro-experiment. Let someone lead an initiative and report back.
  • Use ‘stay’ interviews. Don’t wait for exit interviews to learn what matters to your team. Ask employees what they enjoy, what they want more of, what they hope comes next, and what might make it harder for them to see a future here.
  • Share the learning. If someone takes a course, have them bring insights and learning back to the team.
  • Look for work that can become development. Before automatically taking on a task yourself, consider whether someone on your team could grow by doing it with the right amount of support.

The goal is not to do all of these things at once. Start small and pay attention to what works for the individual employee.

These small steps often create noticeable improvements in stability and performance — giving leaders early wins and short‑term relief from turnover and overwhelm.

Development is most effective when it is not something you simply give an employee, but something you build with them.

Why it matters beyond your team

Developing employees can strengthen much more than an individual resume.

When employees grow:

  • Your team collectively becomes more capable and adaptable
  • You foster greater trust, connection, and engagement across the team
  • The State benefits from stronger talent across the enterprise

And perhaps most importantly, employees feel that someone sees their potential and is willing to invest in them.

In the article From Supporting Development to Strategically Growing Your Team, we’ll build on these practical actions and explore how leaders can move from supporting employee development as a strategy to creating a more intentional, repeatable plan for developing their teams.

References

Measurable Goals: Inclusion & Retention. (n.d.) https://mn.gov/mmb/one-mn-plan/measurable-goals/inclusion-retention.jsp. Data from Minnesota Management and Budget, Enterprise Workforce, HR Data Analytics team.

U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024) https://www.bls.gov/

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