Your people aren’t staying. They’re waiting.

Written By Alex Atherton
Your retention rate went up. Or did it? by motivational Generations Speaker Alex Atherton

If your retention rate has improved in line with the UK’s you might think you are smashing it.

  • Falling staff turnover is not necessarily evidence of improving employee retention. In a weak labour market, employees may remain in jobs they would otherwise leave because there are fewer alternatives.

    UK vacancies fell to 707,000 in spring 2026, their lowest level outside the pandemic since 2014.

    Organisations should therefore measure engagement, productivity, intention to stay and manager effectiveness alongside employee turnover.

    My challenge to leadership teams is take the labour market away and find out where you actually are.

    On a similar theme - https://www.alexatherton.com/blog/remote-early-career

Between 2022 and 2025 the number of resignations more than halved (ONS)

And of course, that’s an improvement. If yours has done the same then your HR team will be putting those figures in a slide deck.

Yet engagement rates are low, and falling. 

Staying and wanting to stay are not the same thing.

If your people have stopped leaving, but have not stopped waiting, you can expect your retention rates to go the wrong way as soon as the job market improves.

So what can you do?

Here’s four things to consider.

1. Low staff turnover is not a good sign on its own

Your retention rate looks the same whether people are choosing to stay or they cannot afford to go. If it’s the latter it can be a very comfortable number to report.

If your attrition rate improved in 2025 and 2026, the honest question to ask is ‘what impact did the labour market have’, as well as ‘what did we do well’. 

But do answer the latter question, and make sure you have a broad evidence base behind your answer. It is a mistake to assume a symbiotic relationship between two separate questions.

It’s a cliche to ‘fix the roof while the sun is shining’ but the truth is working out how motivated, productive and engaged your people are is more important when no one is leaving. It is also easier to compare across years when the same people are in post.

Make sure you ask both questions all the time.

2. Job hugging leads to flattery

A poor job market and sluggish economy leads to job hugging.

As the title implies, this is not just about ‘staying put’ but also about ‘holding on’. 

And holding on to a job means putting your head down and not rocking the boat (these metaphors will end eventually, promise). It does not provide the conditions for innovation or for the level of challenge moving up through the organisation.

It generates behaviour where employees don’t want to catch their boss’ attention. They don’t want to be asked to get involved in the ‘bonus project’ if they will be out of there the minute the job market moves. They don’t choose to start the difficult conversation about how they don’t like the management style coming in their direction if their position is precarious. 

And so might choose the easy way out in all their feedback about what it’s really like to work there. After all, why wouldn’t you be absolutely delighted to work there if the obvious alternative was unemployment?

Too often people do what they need to do in these circumstances.

But that is also something you can measure. If retention is high and therefore your people are becoming more experienced, more expert (in theory) and more expensive you should be more productive right?

Right?

If retention is high you should expect the productivity gain to follow it. If it doesn’t then there’s cause for an upward shift in your expectations.

3. Your youngest staff are the most stuck

Youth unemployment hit an 11-year high in July 2026. The number of 16 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training passed 1,012,000 in the first quarter of the year. This is the first time above a million since 2013.

It has fallen a little since, but is still considerably higher than 12 months ago.

What does that do to a 22 year old in a job they dislike but they depend on the income, with a manager who has never been trained, watching a million of their peers not to get in the door?

The chances are they will stay, albeit reluctantly. And morale is not aided if the HR lead reports that the improvement in Gen Z retention is all because of recent initiatives.

The average rate of turnover across every sector is approximately 15%. The numbers who expect to be somewhere else in a year’s time is far higher, and for Gen Z at least three times that.

Not only do you need to double down on finding out how motivated and engaged your people are when the job market is poor, but you need to be able to break those figures down by age.

It will be your early career folks who leave in heavier numbers when the market shifts. It will also be them who build up the side hustles to make it easier to leave even if the market stays the same.

4. It still comes back to the manager

Gallup (2026) analysed engagement data from 2.7 million employees across 100,000 teams and found managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. 

Teams with highly engaged managers show 59% less turnover. 

In short, the job market is not the biggest variable. .

That 70% does not go anywhere when the labour market freezes. A bad manager in a bad market is far less likely to lose people, although their team can still lose motivation and ultimately their 

productivity.

And if you want to see the results of manager training, it is easier to see that when the team is not changing more than when you have higher levels of turnover.

CMI's research found that 82% of managers enter the role with no formal management or leadership training at all. The OECD puts the number of these accidental managers in the UK at around 2.4 million, costing employers an estimated £84bn.

Is your single biggest variable in whether your people want to stay is a group of people you promoted for being good at a different job? Similarly is it a group whom have not had the necessary investment in training?

Too often manager development remains the first budget line cut and the last one restored.

What is it in your organisation?

And what can you do now while the labour market remains poor?

What you can do next

  1. Separate your figures. Take the gains you made across 2025 and 2026 and separate the part you earned from the part the market handed you. It’s not a precise science but at the very least you should find yourself asking better questions.

  2. Add one question to your next round of one-to-ones or staff survey. ‘If you got an identical offer somewhere else tomorrow, what would make you turn it down?’ Analyse those answers. 

  3. Ask the managers the same question about their teams but also, don’t miss this, about themselves. Manager engagement, as Gallup found, is barely any better than their team members.

  4. Pay as much attention to engagement as retention. 

  5. Look hardest at your under-25s. They have the fewest exits available to them, which makes their attrition figure the least informative one you hold.

FAQ

1. Is low staff turnover always a good sign?

No. It has two opposite causes: people choosing to stay, or people unable to leave. UK resignations more than halved between mid-2022 and late 2025 whilst vacancies fell to 707,000, the lowest outside the pandemic since 2014. Much of the recent improvement is a frozen labour market, not better management.

2. What is job hugging?

Staying in a job you are disengaged from because the alternatives are riskier. It rose up to and across 2026 as UK vacancies hit their weakest level in over a decade, with 48% of employees staying longer than intended. On a dashboard it is indistinguishable from good retention. The difference shows when the market recovers.

3. Our attrition is down and engagement is up. Isn't that just good management?

Very possibly! But still test it and analyse your answers. Make it the start of a conversation rather than the end of one. Remember that flattery doesn’t get an organisation anywhere either.

Alex Atherton is a Gen Z speaker and generations expert who helps organisations navigate multigenerational workplace challenges. Author of The Snowflake Myth, he specialises in Gen Z recruitment and retention and leadership development.

AWARDS NEWS

I've won Silver for Thought Leadership at the Stevie’s International Business Awards!

It’s not a ‘speaking’ award, strictly speaking, it about the impact of my work on the audiences and organisations I work with.

The Stevie's is a big deal if you haven't heard of it. A bunch of categories and 3,800 nominations across 60 countries.

The awards ceremony is in Paris at the end of October. Attendance might be difficult for me, but I’m honoured to be nominated and will think it over.  

One sector, business, person at a time I'm doing my bit.

How can I help you?

  1. Talks, workshops and seminars - I am an award-winning speaker. My talks include recruiting and retaining Gen Z, understanding Gen Z, overcoming the challenges of the multigenerational workplace plus those relevant to the topics below. Speaker showreel here.

  2. My book The Snowflake Myth is out now - to receive a free chapter please click here.

  3. One to one coaching programmes for senior leaders

  4. Team coaching programmes - working IN a team is not the same as working AS a team and yet they are often treated as if they are the same. I help teams move from the former to the latter, and generate huge shifts in productivity and outcomes.

Sources

Alex Atherton https://www.alexatherton.com
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