#retention

WFH and hybrid aren’t perks anymore. They’re the standard. Across industries, companies figured out that flexibility drives better output, better retention, and better talent. The only places still clinging to strict five-day mandates are the ones falling behind.

Forcing people back five days a week doesn’t create culture. It doesn’t create collaboration. It creates resentment. And when you measure badge swipes instead of results, you get exactly what you’re asking for — people doing the minimum required to check the box.

Pair that with a compensation model where effort barely moves the needle, and the incentive is obvious. Stop pushing. Stop caring. Just show up.

That’s how you lose your best people without even realizing it. They don’t argue. They just leave.

You don’t build the future of a company by ignoring the market, ignoring your workforce, and doubling down on a model everyone else has already moved past.

Apparently Centene is outsourcing Fidelis Retention responsibilities to a third party called “Fortuna” as some kind of pilot, claiming it’s to “offer additional options” to members for enrollment/renewal. This is while Retention reps have been begging management to hire more staff, lighten the load, etc. I have a bad feeling about this.

Somebody should tell Mike institutional knowledge is a thing.

The current approach to promotions highlights a troubling double standard.

HR has proceeded with promotions within its own ranks including VP to SVP and reversed role classifications from Senior Manager back to Director, even though the rest of the organization was required to make those changes.

At the same time, commercial line-of-business teams responsible for generating revenue and driving business performance are restricted and effectively blocked. Across my organization, leaders have taken on significantly expanded scope and accountability, with direct responsibility for new business generation, revenue growth, and client retention. Despite these expanded roles, we were told during both job reviews and the annual merit cycle that promotions were not possible even in cases where retention risk and material scope changes are clear.

When HR the very function responsible for fairness, governance, and organizational consistency applies a different standard to itself.

There is a strong emphasis placed on accountability, performance standards, and meeting deadlines, with clear consequences when expectations are not met. Annual performance scores and compensation are directly tied to those metrics.

Given that standard, it is concerning that the organization provided only one week’s notice that the largest bonus of the year would be delayed by an entire month. The communication was limited to a generic platform notification, with no direct leadership acknowledgment or explanation.

Additionally, the messaging shared on internal earnings calls often differs in tone and substance from investor communications, which are delivered prior to company-wide updates. That contrast creates confusion and erodes trust.

Delaying annual and Q4 bonus payouts by a full month, particularly without transparent communication, raises valid concerns about financial timing decisions and prioritization. Compensation is not discretionary recognition; it is earned performance pay.

When accountability appears to operate asymmetrically, it impacts morale, credibility, and ultimately retention. High-performing employees expect alignment between standards set for them and standards modeled by leadership.

With the peanuts netapp pays, who can afford to live close to office ? With RTO you will just lose young talent and not the ones you are aiming . Don't forget about the burn out due to commute. This is just d-mb.

So is it true what I am hearing that if some people are giving there notice they are trying to convince them to stay , i hope that is not true you really can’t don’t that and i hope these people don’t listen. do what is best for you. think will this place will be in a year

I put in my notice and out of nowhere they offered a 15 percent raise after claiming for ages that budgets were tight. It’s impossible not to question the timing, and part of me wonders if it's worth sticking around at Humana because of it or not. It does bring my pay above the one I'm getting at my new position, but I'm still uncertain.

I'm watching coworkers who are just a few years from retirement willingly walk away. That never used to happen. If people that close to the finish line are giving up their secure exit, you know there's something seriously wrong with this place.

I'm getting so tired of Gainwell management. They want top-tier results but offer bottom-of-the-barrel raises. It's a recipe for a mediocre, unmotivated staff. Anyone with real talent and options will walk away, leaving us worse off.

Retention bonus for APAC people who are expected to keep things going now that seelscum is gone. Same thing happened when luxoft lost their CFO and ramneth was brought on. If you are not getting a retention bonus you are not needed. But be very aware that they are there and 5-6 figures.

Top performers are a threat to weak management. If the company was smart-they would reward their hard workers. They can’t because of this. They are too threatened that those below them are smarter than they are. Intelligence will get you in the door-but Optum is too threatened to keep you.

Wondering if they announced yet. I heard it's going to be 150% not because of company performance but from the fact that so many employees are pi---d off they are using it for people to stay. Before everyone jumps on me for being a bitter ex employee, they wouldn't be continuing to lay off people if they were doing well plus I was very grateful for my severance package!

There is significant pay compression happening across nursing teams.
New hires, including nurses with minimal experience and recent graduates, are being hired at higher rates than long-tenured nurses.
In many cases, these higher-paid new hires are being trained by the lower-paid, more experienced staff.
Leadership has also communicated that there will be no raises this year.
This leaves experienced nurses with no mechanism to address the gap.
It’s worth asking how sustainable this model is for retention and morale.
What leverage, if any, do employees actually have here?

Over my time at Fiserv I have noticed one very prominent theme. A select few (often with lackluster work ethic) are rewarded with bonuses, raises, extra privileges, while at the same time the ones actually getting the work done are designated as “work horses” who will get the job done and be told “you are lucky to have this position, with some luck you may see a promotion in a few year!”. They wonder why half the company has silently revolted and the stock is where it is. I have seen people on my team leave for high paying roles and when asked why HR is shocked to find out that they left due to being overworked and under paid. Don’t even get me started on the retention bonuses. My advice to young professionals is this: DO NOT under any circumstances accept being a work horse and yes man. This company does not respect hard work. Ask for more money and ask early, put the pressure on them. Make sure you are applying elsewhere to get counter offers, the market is tough but it can be done.

This place plans to get rid of you for any reason they can find now. Make it hard on them. Keep key notes out of reach, dont give all details and important bits of pertinent info when training, dont save anything where they can access what you created while here. Make it difficult . Stick it in on them every way you can think of. Why should your hard work be used after they cut the cord for made up reasons. They dont want to give merit so give them the performance they claim you earned. This is all going to burn them big time and im not sad about it. I hope we get too witness it or read about it in the news

Verizon CHRO: Retaining Top Talent!!!

Mind blowing: McKinsey, high performers deliver 800% more output than average employees.

Proven tips to retain top talent:

1. Overpay to keep your top performers
2. Make recognition the default
3. Listen to what energizes your team and lean into it
4. Address toxic behavior immediately
5. Be soft on the person and hard on the problem
6. Trust people with as much autonomy as possible
7. Implement meeting-free days
8. Normalize frequent feedback
9. Remove friction to let your top people thrive

The age of pizza parties and ping-pong tables as retention strategies is over.

Use these 9 tips to invest meaningfully in your highest performers and they’ll reinvest in the business tenfold.

Who is getting retention bonus?

Why is DXC letting top people walk out the door without a fight? I’m not just talking about layoffs but folks leaving for competitors and getting zero pushback. No raises, no incentives, nothing. What's the plan for the future if this is how things are being done?

I heard a rumor about someone in another department who was about to resign but then decided to stay. They mentioned getting a much better offer from the company to reconsider. Is that something that actually happens here at Exxon? I've never personally known anyone to get a retention offer like that, but I don't see why the guy would lie.

For those of you that signed that retention agreement after last year's (or a previous year) bonus and you've quit, what actually happened? We signed to say that we'd pay it back, but what actually happened?

As a people manager (UK) I have a low paid top performing team member, who is expected to be promoted next week, however her new salary increase looks miserable. If she gets offered a new job external for more money (which she can prob get easily), how easy/hard is it to get management approval to offer a counter offer to try retain her? (Also is there limits on much extra a counter offer can be).

What’s this retention bonus people keep talking about? Who’s eligible and how much do they get?

Everything has been mismanaged so badly over the past couple of years that it would take some kind of radical jumpstart, driven by an exceptionally creative and courageous group of people, to propel us upward. And we all know that isn’t going to happen. I survived all the layoffs only to watch a steady decline and neglect of everything that actually matters - how people are treated, retention of talent, development of ideas, attention to creativity and detail, and motivation built on real stakes. Sure, the business may limp along, maybe even grow sales from time to time, but we’ve turned into a run-of-the-mill corporation peddling products. At some point, the question of why we even exist will answer itself.

If you deliver for this company they reward you. But a lot of people are just well meaning dead weight, and they should have been axed years ago.

Maybe stop crying about your misfortune and and go make your own fortune.

I was just wondering if it's common here. When someone puts in their notice at Ford, does management ever try to get them to stay with a better offer on the spot? I haven't seen it happen to anyone on my team, but I know some other companies do it. I'm just curious if it's even a thing they consider.

Gremlins that instead of fostering an environment of positive growth in such a way that you WANT to be here and others from the outside WANT to be part of Citi……

You have gremlin MDs that rely on desperate people that NEED to be here. These are people who are easy to bully, manipulate and whip into servitude and long hours and sacrifice of personal time.

You can’t do that to those that are not desperate. I’ve seen quite a few already financially sound people on solid ground take a look around and “Yeah, no, this is not happening, there’s nothing here of any substance” and leave.

This in itself speaks volumes. The constant pumping out of notice after notice of “tough decisions” , “tough growth”, “hard messages”, “difficult changes” etc… is enough to deter anyone from hiring on to Citi. How do you draw in AND retain truly top talent from the outside given this environment. Sure, Citi can draw in the top talent but retaining them is another thing.

It's getting pretty empty around here lately. Several of the sharpest people on my team just left for much better offers. And if they managed to get better offers in this job market, you know they're good. It's frustrating because a simple, competitive raise probably would have kept them. But I guess that kind of forward thinking is asking too much from this place.

After talking to quite a few of my coworkers and everyone got a 0% or 1% raise. We work in Carlsbad so how do they expect to keep good employees when they don’t take care of them?

I’m a TDP who’s been with AT&T for two years. I’m proud of the work I do, I enjoy my team, and I came into this program excited to grow here. But after two years of watching wave after wave of TDPs walk away, I’m convinced leadership needs to hear this whether they want to or not.

Here’s the reality from inside the program:

Most TDPs enjoy the work. Most enjoy their teams. And most came in valuing the opportunities AT&T could offer.

But the 5 day RTO mandate is the single biggest deal breaker, by a mile.
Not culture. Not pay. Not opportunities.
RTO. Five days. Every week.

The average commute for TDPs is 30–60+ minutes each way, often longer for those assigned to Dallas or Atlanta rotations. That’s 10–15 hours a week spent commuting just to sit on Teams calls we could’ve taken from home, using the same AT&T network we sell to customers for remote productivity.

And us TDPs see what leadership refuses to acknowledge:
Almost every competing employer offers hybrid or remote flexibility with higher pay. Once people finish the program, they leave. Not because they want to, but because staying means burning out.

Culture is not slogans or emails, you can’t speak it into existence. It’s what people feel every day.
And right now, we feel exhausted, unheard, and disillusioned.

That August CEO email laid out “values” that many of us don’t recognize in the company’s actions. The takeaway among TDPs wasn’t alignment, it was the sinking realization that leadership has no intention of returning to hybrid work. Morale tanked after that message and any remaining hope went with it.

If leadership wants to retain talent, real talent, the next generation of engineers, analysts, PMs, and leaders then you need to fix what’s actually broken.

TDPs aren’t leaving because the work is hard.
They’re leaving because the system is broken.

A rigid 5 day RTO policy in 2026, at a telecommunications company that literally sells the ability to work from anywhere, is not just outdated it’s self inflicted brain drain.

You don’t have a recruiting problem.
You have a retention crisis… one that’s absolutely solvable. And if you decide not to change then eventually you'll have no one under 40 working here.

Return to hybrid.
Respect people’s time.
Align actions with the culture you claim to value.

Because here’s the part leadership should really pay attention to:

If you keep the 5 day mandate, you will lose the majority of your young talent.
Not gradually, but all at once.

And I say this as someone who wants to stay. But I, like many others, will be exploring other options next year if nothing changes.

I know this forum may not be the “official” place to say this, but it is the only place where employees feel safe being honest. So I hope someone high enough up reads this and does something before this program and the talent pipeline it feeds collapses under the weight of decisions that never needed to be this rigid.

There is no business case for 5 day RTO.
There is no cultural case.
There is only the cost, and you’re already paying it.

I currently have a strong job offer outside of Target (roughly a 20% raise). I work in Supply Chain in HQ. I’m having a hard time deciding if I should just stick it out through this hard period or if I should leave. It’s with a well established Fortune 500 company here in the Twin Cities. How would you evaluate this with Target’s potential in the future? I’m afraid to jump.

Effective 1/1/2026, UHG/Optum/UHC will reduce the maximum for their 401K match from 4.5% to 3.5%.

In case anyone was wondering if they're trying to get employees to give up and leave.

Title says it all.

There’s some really strange restructuring that’s making very little sense. Poor customer retention this year. Internal and external auditors evaluating engineers specifically, that I’ve heard of. Lots of resources being directed to other projects/departments.

I want to quit so badly and I even have got interviews elsewhere but I’m held back by repaying my tuition. I have one more year for the two years so maybe I’ll just hang on til then. I hate this place so much.

While the plan was being developed to layoff 15,000 people a retention bonus was extended to Sampath and the CFO Skiadas. Each received $4,000,000 in stock. Hans will collect close to $25,000,000 for 2025 and will continue to get paid as an advisory member of the board. Dan's salary is $1,500,000 with long term incentives that will mature to $60,000,000.

Let that sink in while you navigate your job search. For those that have expressed guilt because you still have a job and your peers were let go, ask these execs how they manage to sleep at night. They are making a windfall while others suffer. Sam can speak to this in the next all hands and explain how execs and the front line are treated equally.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/17/anthem-unitedhealth-emblemhealth-lawsuit-health-insurance/

This is regarding the new People Team internal hiring policy: So if you apply to and get accepted into a new role that comes with a title change and salary increase, it doesn’t take effect until the FOLLOWING YEAR!! What is the logic here? We’ll just keep doing a harder job with more responsibility for the same pay?

The people who are internally marketable are also externally marketable. So much for retaining our high performers!

When will they realize that getting rid of the best people is only harming the company in the long run? The value of institutional knowledge can't be overstated and they just keep throwing it away like it's nothing.

Next Quarter
So, there's a lot going on here… Q3 and we're revving up for Q4… and we're preparing preparing for Q1. you know we have our eyes on the following Q2 and Q3 that comes after that and then that pivotal Q4 kind of ramping out to 2027… pivotal Q1, until 2027 Q2, followed by that Q3 and the Q4, kind of going into 2028 Q1. so there's a lot that we are kind of like laddering up there's a lot, kind of going over and we're gonna make sure that we kind of like we are not boiling the ocean or jumping shark next quarter. Upcoming quarter, also, headcount rebalancing. And talent retention.

Can anyone confirm or deny if they actually got it? I thought only senior leadership and people managers got raises or bonuses last year and this year? It's going to be hard to keep ANYONE on long term let alone the talented people if there's another year with zero extra compensation for 2026.