Retention is a leadership habit, and most leaders are only watching for the signal that arrives too late to act on.

According to Gallup, 51% of U.S. employees were either actively looking for a new job or watching for opportunities in the fourth quarter of 2025 — one of the highest shares Gallup has recorded since it started tracking this measure in 2015. Resignation rates, meanwhile, sit near decade lows. The gap between those two numbers is the real problem: Employees are deciding to leave long before they ever act on it.

I have spent close to two decades coaching leaders through exactly this gap between what a team says and what it actually feels. The pattern starts months before the resignation letter, in a meeting where someone stops raising a hand.

Retention too often gets treated as an HR function, something handled through a once-a-year survey or an after-the-fact exit interview. In practice, it’s a leadership discipline, built on paying attention long before someone updates a résumé. Here’s how to build it:

High performers rarely announce their exit. Marti Willett, president of Digital Marketing Recruiters, a specialized recruitment firm focused on digital marketing talent, told me the earliest signals are almost always behavioral, not measurable. “High performers often start showing subtle signs like becoming less proactive, contributing less in meetings or doing only what’s required rather than going above and beyond,” she said.

Source link