Finding the Root Cause of Turnover Leads to Employee Retention

I started a job in a hotel with 46% turnover.  That’s a lot.  Needless to say, nearly half the staff was walking out the door and being replaced every single year.

Turnover is costly to any organization. There's time spent recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. There's the hard money spent on job postings and salaries. And there's the cost you can't put a line item on: an organization running short-staffed, piling responsibilities onto the employees who stayed, pushing them toward burnout. Not to mention the customers who leave because of poorer customer service.  Estimates for turnover range from 2 to 6 times an employee's annual salary, depending on the role and how you calculate it. When I started that job, our 46% turnover rate cost roughly $650,000 a year.

As I got into the rhythm of the job and built my expertise, I started paying attention to how many people I was recruiting and onboarding each week. Hint: it was a lot. And that got me thinking. Why was I spinning my wheels recruiting for the same positions, week after week? Why were people quitting, and what could be done about it?

I made it my mission to find the root cause. Not a guess based on what leaders thought. Not an assumption based on what I'd heard in the break room. Real data.

I stopped employees in the hallways and asked questions about their jobs. I gave new hires questionnaires at the end of onboarding training, back then that meant in person, asking what worked and what needed improvement. I met with tenured employees to gather their feedback.  And I didn’t do this  just during the annual employee engagement survey.

I was surprised because people gave me more information than I'd asked for. And they were glad I asked. Nobody had asked them before, outside of the anonymous employee engagement survey. And  the results sat in a drawer somewhere, out of sight and out of mind.  I identified trends based on the feedback. 

The data suggested people were leaving because of salary and benefits, poor management, and a lack of development opportunity or career paths. I put together a plan to improve those areas. Through teamwork and dedication, the managers and I reduced turnover to 32% within two years, and we saw morale and guest satisfaction both improve.

I didn't fix that turnover problem by reading an article about the top five reasons employees quit. I found out what was happening in my building, with the employees, in my market.

Too many leaders skip that step. They read the national surveys, see compensation or recognition near the top of the list, and start designing fixes for a problem they haven't confirmed they have. Sometimes they're right. Often, they're solving last year's problem, or someone else's problem, or the problem the loudest exit interview mentioned instead of the one showing up quietly across dozens of others.

I didn't have a formal tool for this back then. I had hallway conversations, paper surveys, and a stubborn refusal to keep guessing. It worked, but it took time I didn't really have to spare, and I was building the method as I went.

You don't have to do it that way.

If your turnover is high and you don't know why, that's your starting point. Not with a new benefits package. Not with a wellness program. Not with another engagement survey nobody trusts because nothing changed after the last one. You start by finding your real root cause, the way I did in those hallways and onboarding sessions, except faster and with a clearer picture at the end of it.

That's what the Employee Retention Snapshot is built to do. It's a focused, structured look at what's driving turnover in your organization right now. Not a generic benchmark. Not a list of industry trends. A real look at your data, your team, your specific situation. It's the hallway conversations and the paycheck surveys turned into something you can act on.

Once you know the root cause, the work gets interesting. A Strategy Session takes what the Snapshot uncovers and turns it into a plan, the same kind of work I did with those hotel managers, without taking two years of trial and error. Salary and benefits issue? We look at it with real context and real options, not blanket raises. Management problem? We name it specifically and figure out what kind of support or accountability moves the needle. Career development gap? We build a real pathway, not a vague promise about growth opportunities that nobody can describe a year later.

I reduced turnover by 14 points because I refused to keep guessing. I wanted real answers, and I went and got them. Whatever your number is right now, 72%, 41%, 25%, or 15%, the question is the same one I asked myself in that hallway: do you know why employees are leaving or just assuming you do?

If you don't know yet, that's where the work starts.

Curious what your turnover is telling you? Let's find out together. Reach out about an Employee Retention Snapshot and let's get you real answers instead of more guesses.