02Attraction and Retention
Identify the working conditions behind avoidable departures and focus retention action where it can address the problem.
Start with your situation
The decisions it supports
The framework at a glance
Understand why people stay or leave and focus action where it will help most.
The approach
Retention matters when avoidable departures disrupt capability, relationships, service or delivery. A useful strategy also recognises that people change direction, internal moves can support development and some workforce transitions are planned. The starting point is the continuity the organisation needs and the employment experience it offers.
The HR Delivery Retention Strategy Framework uses the Stay System to connect employee experience, workforce movement and organisational continuity. Five conditions describe what leaders can examine and improve. Three evidence layers help distinguish what people report, what is happening and why it matters. A practical action portfolio turns those findings into owned changes.
Use the framework when repeated departures affect a role group, early attrition is increasing, essential knowledge is concentrated or leaders want to understand which employment conditions deserve attention. It supports organisational decisions about work and support, rather than predictions about which named employee will leave.
Examine whether demands, staffing, schedules, tools and recovery opportunities make the work manageable. Look for recurring friction such as unplanned overtime, unclear priorities, avoidable rework and persistent vacancies that increase pressure on colleagues who remain.
The diagnostic question is: can people continue to do worthwhile work under these conditions? Review the design of work and available capacity alongside the support offered to employees.
Examine the balance between contribution and the employment offer, including pay, recognition, flexibility, security and access to benefits. Consider how decisions are explained and whether people can understand the criteria that affect them.
The diagnostic question is: does the employment deal feel credible and fairly applied? Investigate concerns rather than assuming that an aggregate satisfaction result proves fairness or that every departure is a pay problem.
Examine whether managers provide clarity, useful feedback, consistent treatment and practical help. Review the support and decision authority available to managers themselves. A local pattern may reflect organisational constraints as well as individual management practice.
The diagnostic question is: can colleagues rely on their manager and the wider leadership system? Combine employee perspectives with observable practices and evidence about the conditions managers operate within.
Examine whether people feel respected, included and able to raise concerns without disadvantage. Explore the experience of joining a team, contributing different views and accessing information or opportunities.
The diagnostic question is: can people participate and be heard here? Protect confidential routes, communicate what has changed and give particular attention to unresolved concerns. A low level of complaints does not establish that everyone feels able to speak.
Examine the visibility and accessibility of learning, progression, internal moves and changing responsibilities. Test whether career conversations lead to realistic opportunities and whether development is available beyond highly visible groups.
The diagnostic question is: can people see a credible next chapter? Where progression is limited, honest conversations and useful development are more responsible than promises the organisation cannot fulfil.
What you can take forward
Workforce movement, employee accounts and operating evidence brought together without predicting who will leave.
A focused view of sustainable work, fair exchange, trusted management, belonging and future opportunity.
Actions to protect valued conditions, repair friction, renew the offer and prepare for unavoidable movement.
RSF · In practice
Experience evidence includes confidential listening, carefully designed stay conversations, employee feedback and exit themes. It helps identify possible conditions shaping decisions. Participation patterns and the safety of speaking openly affect what this evidence can tell us.
Movement evidence includes actual exits, tenure patterns, internal moves, early departures and recruitment or onboarding transitions. Separate voluntary departures from other exits and distinguish leaving the organisation from moving within it. Use consistent definitions before comparing groups or periods.
Continuity evidence concerns the consequences for work: vacancy exposure, service disruption, concentrated expertise, replacement capacity and opportunities to transfer knowledge. Define role criticality through the work and its dependencies, rather than personal status or unsupported labels about employee value.
CIPD guidance recommends understanding why employees leave and considering responses including fair treatment, flexibility and wellbeing. Read the turnover and retention guidance. The Stay System provides a structured way to organise that inquiry without treating an intention to leave as an observed departure.
RSF · In practice
Agree the business question, population, reporting period and confidentiality arrangements. Review data quality and establish an interpretable baseline. A rate without the number of people affected, the time period and the population definition can mislead.
Combine the three evidence layers and test alternative explanations. A change in early attrition could coincide with changed recruitment expectations, onboarding gaps, a difficult roster or labour-market movement. Exit interviews alone may underrepresent sensitive concerns; employee surveys alone cannot establish why people subsequently left.
Stay conversations should explore what helps people work well, what makes staying difficult and what can realistically change. Managers should listen without seeking a promise to stay or implying that raising a concern will limit opportunities. Agreed actions and a follow-up date make the conversation useful.
Prioritise recurring issues that affect continuity or the working experience and that the organisation can influence. Record what supports each finding and what still needs checking. Where safe group analysis is impossible, use a broader reporting level and carefully facilitated discussion instead of publishing identifiable findings.
RSF · In practice
Select actions by employee impact, continuity consequences, evidence strength, fairness, feasibility and cost. Avoid a single automatic priority score that conceals trade-offs. Record what takes priority, what is deferred and how continuity will be protected while resources are constrained.
Name what must be maintained through growth, restructuring or leadership change so that improvement activity does not accidentally remove strengths.
Prioritise supported problems such as inconsistent scheduling, inaccessible learning, unclear pay decisions or unresolved resource constraints. Assign an owner with the authority to change the relevant practice.
Develop credible internal pathways, better role design or revised manager support where the diagnosis shows a structural gap. Pilot substantial changes before committing to wider implementation.
Strengthen knowledge transfer, succession, internal mobility and respectful exits. Continuity planning recognises that a sound retention strategy still needs to cope with people leaving.
RSF · In practice
Each selected action needs an intended outcome, baseline, accountable owner, resources, milestones, employee communication and review date. Involve the colleagues affected in testing whether the proposed change addresses the actual problem.
Engagement outputs can include a retention evidence map, agreed movement definitions, a continuity exposure review, a prioritised action portfolio, manager conversation guidance and an evaluation dashboard. The outputs are tailored to the scope; they do not require individual flight-risk scoring or a new analytics platform.
RSF · In practice
Monitor delivery first: whether the roster changed, a development route opened or a resource problem was resolved. Then examine relevant experience measures and actual workforce movement over an appropriate period. Use cohort retention or turnover measures only with explicit population and time definitions.
For a simple turnover rate, divide leavers during the period by average headcount for that same period; multiply by 100 to express it as a percentage. State which exits are included. Explain alternative methods when workforce patterns require them. Report counts alongside rates and avoid unstable league tables for small teams.
Consider concurrent changes in reward, leadership, labour demand and organisational structure. A before-and-after improvement may be encouraging without proving that the intervention caused it. Cost estimates should use documented local assumptions and avoid counting the same vacancy impact twice.
RSF · In practice
Business leaders own changes to work and continuity. HR coordinates diagnosis, employee involvement and fair treatment. Managers own agreed local actions, while appropriate specialists oversee privacy, analytics and local employment requirements.
Collect only information needed for the stated purpose. Use access controls, reporting thresholds and small-cell suppression to reduce identification risk. Do not mine private messages, health information or unrelated personal activity to assign individual flight-risk labels. Group findings must not become a basis for denying opportunities or targeting employees thought likely to leave.
Your questions, answered
No. The goal is a sustainable employment experience and appropriate continuity. Internal mobility and planned transitions can be healthy; the diagnosis establishes which departures create a problem.
Only if the evidence supports a reward response and the proposal survives fairness, affordability and local review. A bonus will not resolve every work-design or management problem.
Yes. Combine relevant drivers and future-intention findings with actual movement and continuity evidence, while respecting the original confidentiality commitments.
An illustrative application
This illustrative example shows the decisions and records the framework supports; it is not a reported client result.
Departures from a shift-based role group leave experienced colleagues providing frequent short-notice cover. Leaders consider a retention payment, but employee accounts also raise scheduling, manager support and access to development.
Read the five Stay System conditions alongside actual departures and continuity exposure. Compare rosters, vacancies and development access across comparable teams. Combine exit themes with protected listening and stay conversations; test whether recurring pressure precedes departures or is intensified by them.
Protect useful team support, repair confirmed scheduling problems and test access to development. Consider reward changes only where Fair exchange evidence supports them. Prepare knowledge-transfer and cover arrangements while changes take effect. Operations owns the roster and capacity response; HR coordinates listening and fair access.
Check whether roster commitments and development access improved, then examine workload, experience and actual movement over a defined period. Report counts as well as rates. Reconsider the portfolio if cover pressure persists, and record labour-market or leadership changes that could also explain the findings.
Put the framework to work
HR Delivery can help identify the conditions worth protecting, the problems worth repairing and the changes most likely to support a credible future at work.
