08-31-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

Stop trying to retain employees

Investing in employee development creates a culture where people want to stay.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

Every CEO I know is worried about employee retention. The questions are almost always the same. How do we reduce turnover? How do we keep our best people from leaving? How do we compete when another employer offers a dollar or two more an hour?

After spending much of my career designing and commissioning factories, I think we’re taking the wrong approach. We should focus on how building a company employees wouldn’t want to leave in the first place.

In manufacturing, turnover has become so common that many companies simply accept it as part of doing business. For some functions such as consumer electronics contracting, labor-intensive food processing, and temp heavy/light manufacturing and assembly, the lowest-paid positions turn over at more than 100% every year. In these cases, this means every one of those jobs is refilled annually—sometimes more than once.

Companies often measure turnover by the stack of........

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