We recently released our first Quarterly Workforce Trends Report, built from thousands of employee exit interviews conducted across industries and it reflects the depth and consistency of the data we collect each year.
But it’s important to be clear about what this report is and what it is not.
This is not a diagnostic tool for your organization. It is not a shortcut to understanding your own retention challenges. And it is not a substitute for doing the work required to understand your workforce.
It reflects broader patterns we are seeing across industries, roles, and organizations. It reflects consistent patters in employee behavior across organizations but interpretation always requires context.
Why We Share This Data
We publish this data for a simple reason. It demonstrates the consistency of what we see over time. View a decade’s worth of Retention Reports here.
Career growth continues to show up. Manager effectiveness continues to matter. Workload and work-life balance remain part of the conversation. Early tenure turnover continues to represent a meaningful portion of overall exits. Learn more about why they left and how they rated their experience here.
These patterns are not new. They are not surprising. And they are not unique to any one organization.
What they represent is the reality that employee behavior is shaped by a set of conditions that show up repeatedly, regardless of industry or geography.
Where Organizations Get This Wrong
The mistake organizations often make is assuming that knowing the categories is the same as understanding the problem.
Categories describe behavior. They do not explain it.
Knowing that career growth is a driver of turnover does not tell you what career growth means inside your organization. It does not tell you whether the issue is development, promotion, job fit, or something else entirely.
The same is true for manager effectiveness, workload, or any other category. These are broad areas. The real insight comes from understanding what is happening within them.
Normative Data Is Not a Diagnosis
This is where normative data can be helpful and where it can be misleading. It tells you what is common. It does not tell you what happens at your organization.
It provides context. It helps you understand what tends to matter across the workforce. It can reinforce that the challenges you are facing are not unique.
But it does not tell you what is driving behavior in your organization.
That requires direct input from your employees. It requires structured listening, asking better questions, consistent data collection, understanding the specific conditions shaping their experience, and the ability to translate feedback into action.
Why This Matters
We chose to release this data quarterly not because organizations should be analyzing retention every three months, but because it reflects the ongoing nature of the workforce.
The conditions that shape employee behavior are not static. They evolve over time, and they vary across teams, leaders, and locations.
The goal of this report is not to provide answers. It is to reinforce the importance of asking the right questions.
The Role of This Report
If this report does anything, it should do one thing well.
It should give leaders confidence that the drivers of employee behavior can be understood, and that there is value in taking a more disciplined, data-driven approach to doing so.
But the real work happens inside your organization.
Not in a quarterly report.
Not in a benchmark comparison.
And not in a single data point.
It happens when you take the time to understand what your employees are actually experiencing and why.
Final Thought
The data we publish reflects what we see across thousands of employees.
But your workforce is not an average. And improving retention requires understanding what is happening beneath the averages, before those patterns turn into turnover.
If you want to improve retention, the goal is not to rely on what we are seeing broadly. It is to understand what is happening specifically within your own organization while there is still time to act.
Want to understand what’s driving turnover in your organization? Request a Workforce Insight Review.