Top trends in employee retention

Companies are putting more focus on retention than hiring, according to Monster’s 2026 Hiring WorkWatch Report.

Fifty-two percent of employers listed retention as their top workforce priority in 2026, while only 45% cited hiring talent, Monster found.

On the other hand, hiring leaders said their top workforce concerns were economic uncertainty, retaining talent, attracting qualified candidates, pressure to raise wages, skills gaps and keeping up with artificial intelligence and automation.

The report determined that “hiring has not stopped, it is becoming more intentional.”

“They are keeping strong employees, building skills internally, and adopting AI thoughtfully,” the report said. 

The survey of 800 U.S.-based hiring decision-makers found that 64% of employers said it was hard to find qualified candidates. Monster said that this “helps explain why many organizations are investing more in internal development and skills-building.”

A report released earlier this month by human capital management tech company Isolved found that nearly half of the HR leaders said they’re dealing with a self-inflicted skills crisis because they’re not adapting fast enough to technology and industry shifts. 

Meanwhile, Monster’s survey found that employers are thinking about AI, with 74% saying they plan to invest in AI training or upskilling for employees this year and 41% saying they already use AI in hiring or workforce management. Another 31% said they planned to adopt AI tools soon.

Apart from addressing skills gaps, other factors that slow down the hiring process include salary and benefit expectations, competition and meeting expectations about remote and hybrid work. Fifty-four percent of employers said return-to-office mandates made hiring harder. 

Nonetheless, the survey found that 72% of employers expected their current hybrid or on-site policies to stay the same, and 22% planned to increase in-office requirements.

Massive employers Deloitte and Zoom recently came into the spotlight for their decisions to cut worker benefits. 

At Deloitte, a group of workers will see parental leave, PTO, pensions and IVF funding scaled back starting in January, Business Insider reported. Meanwhile, Zoom reduced the number of weeks offered as paid parental leave. 

As more power shifts to employers, hiring remains tight and healthcare costs continue to soar, where exactly does the employee value proposition stand? 

Erin McAuley, chief people officer at Springline Advisory, an accounting and advisory services firm, said the changes aren’t surprising. 

“Firms are definitely under real pressure right now between cost structure and our workforce models, client expectations,” she said. 

But she urged caution. 

“Benefits aren’t perks, really; they’re signals to people,” McAuley said. “When you think about them as signals — and signals [of] how people translate their value — you have to be very cautious about the different decisions that you’re making.”

The main thing, she said, is to consider how any benefits changes will land with employees. 

“You’re going to see that show up in your profitability and the economics of your business,” McAuley said. “People risk it hitting their pocketbook in lots of different ways, both in the cost of retention and great talent leaving but also the cost of client experience and what that means for client retention.”

The business decisions companies make as they decide where to spend and where to pull back are tied directly to employee trust, Jared Pope, a benefits and employment law attorney and CEO of Work Shield, a workplace misconduct management firm, said in emailed comments. 

“What is new is that benefits people thought were locked in are now being adjusted, and in some cases, applied differently across parts of the workforce. And that’s where things get tricky,” Pope said. “Employees don’t see these as perks. They see them as part of what they were promised as total compensation when they took the job. When that changes, it doesn’t just hit compensation. It creates uncertainty.”

That uncertainty shows up in lower levels of focus, shifts in engagement and potential turnover, he said. 

“Some benefits carry more weight than others. Parental leave and fertility support are not interchangeable with gym stipends or office perks. They directly affect how employees plan their lives and careers,” Pope said. 

For that reason, changes aren’t evenly distributed, he said. Rather, women and caregivers — groups that companies have targeted to improve retention and representation for years — tend to be harder hit. 

“At the end of the day, once you start pulling back on something employees rely on, you don’t just change the benefit. You change how people evaluate working for you,” Pope said. 

In an emailed statement, a Zoom spokesperson said the company is committed to employee well-being and supporting new parents. 

“We regularly review our benefits to ensure they remain aligned with the marketplace and the long-term health and sustainability of our business. We are confident our overall compensation and benefits package – including our updated parental leave policy – remains competitive and in line with peers,” the spokesperson said. 

Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment. 

McAuley recommended making sure that a company’s people strategy is representative of its business strategy. 

“That's what’s going to guide you through these ebbs and cycles,” she said. “People remember how they were treated … That shows up in both the cost of retention, the cost of hiring and then your employee brand.”

Dr. Roger Shedlin, CEO of WIN, a family-building and reproductive health benefit provider, said his company’s experience convinces them that the companies making benefits cuts are “outliers.”

“It is rare, in our experience working with clients, to see clients cut back on these benefits. Actually, we’ve seen the exact opposite,” he said.

Sponsored content

By Rx Savings Solutions

Gone are the days when the pharmacy benefit defined the lay of the land for an insured member. While the vast majority of prescriptions are still purchased using insurance, pharmacy consumers increasingly look for the lowest-cost options, whether found in their prescription benefit or somewhere else.[i]

Discount cards may have started this trend, but a growing number of direct purchase options are driving it today. Various direct options bypass traditional insurance and intermediaries, yet only for certain medications. Within the covered benefit, various patient assistance programs also contribute to an expanding plate of affordability solutions.

Here's a breakdown of the impact each can have on both patient out-of-pocket (OOP) costs and plan sponsor pharmacy spend.

1. Discount Cards

Discount cards reduce the cash price patients pay at the pharmacy, often making medications more affordable — especially for members with high-deductible plans or patients without insurance. Some major for-profit discount card providers advertise up to 80% savings over retail pharmacy cash prices.[ii]

For patients:

Discount cards can broaden access for some patients by reducing cost barriers even when insurance is not used. This may help some patients who might otherwise skip or delay needed treatment.

For plan sponsors:

Discount-card transactions bypass insurance, meaning there is no cost incurred by the plan. Whatever the member spends doesn't count toward their deductible or out-of-pocket maximum — potentially delaying when insurance benefits fully activate. (Note: Some plan sponsors may allow members to submit cash pay purchases and apply toward deductibles.)

However, because the claim never passes through the pharmacy benefit, plan sponsors typically lose the data into patient utilization patterns, disease management opportunities and potential safety monitoring.

2. Biopharma Copay Assistance

Copay assistance comes in a variety of names and forms, like patient assistance programs, copay cards/coupons and manufacturer coupons. Collectively, these are often referred to as affordability programs.

For patients:

These programs reduce the amount an employee pays at the pharmacy. For some medications, this can turn a several-hundred-dollar copay into a much smaller payment, even $0. For some patients, it can mean the difference between filling a needed prescription and skipping or delaying treatment due to OOP costs.

For plan sponsors:

Self-insured employer plans often pay less when copay assistance is used because the manufacturer's coupon covers some or all the patient's cost share, reducing what the plan must pay for the medication during early fills.

Accumulator considerations: With a copay accumulator, the coupon reduces only the member's payment — not their deductible or out-of-pocket maximum — so the plan benefits by not accelerating the patient toward full plan coverage later in the benefit year.

If a plan does not use a copay accumulator or maximizer, a member may reach their deductible and out-of-pocket cap faster. After that, the plan pays a larger share of costs for the remainder of the year, potentially raising employer drug spending.

3. Direct (to Consumer/Patient or Employer)

Direct-to-patient or -consumer (DTP or DTC) distribution models involve drug manufacturers or vendors making a variety of medications available directly to patients. In direct-to-employer (DTE) models, self-insured employers contract through program administrators for direct access to a manufacturer's specific drug at a fixed price, subject to cost-sharing and plan design.

Direct purchase options may involve consumer marketing, telehealth evaluation and cash price pharmacies or digital platforms for direct purchases with approved prescriptions. Generally, these avenues operate outside the traditional pharmacy benefit.

For patients:

As with discount cards, patients pay a cash price that might be lower than the OOP cost using their pharmacy benefit. DTP prices are not subject to deductibles, coinsurance or other insurance variables, giving patients a clear point of comparison and perhaps fewer surprises at checkout. Similarly, money spent on DTC purchases does not count toward deductibles or OOP maximums.

For plan sponsors:

Direct purchase can help a self-insured employer provide members with a potentially lower-cost alternative to benefit pricing or access to medications not covered by the benefit. Whether a member chooses a DTC channel or purchases through a DTE program, the plan cost is zero (unless reimbursement to members is offered). Depending on the arrangement and DTE product, some employers may realize different net pricing outcomes compared to traditional benefit channels.

What to Make of the Mix

We've outlined the core tenets of these affordability options solely from a cost standpoint. Clinical considerations, data and utilization management control, recent policy developments and a host of other factors can come into play when evaluating these options at the patient or plan sponsor level.

True to their purpose, discount cards, patient assistance programs and direct purchase options can and often do make medications more affordable for many patients and plans. But not always, and not always for both parties over the long or short term. True value is situational based on patient and plan priorities.

As we have learned over a decade-plus serving millions of RxSS members and hundreds of health plans and plan sponsors, no two clients or populations are the same. It's up to each to find their sweet spot between affordability and cost control with the right mix of established and emerging options. The right pharmacy solution can connect whatever those fragmented dots may be. 

[i] GoodRx Research; "More Americans Than Ever Are Struggling to Afford Their Prescription Medications," June 27, 2025.

[ii] AI Overview; "average savings by using a discount card for prescription drugs," accessed March 2026.

Workers feel they prioritize training more than employers do, a perception gap that can harm retention in the long run, according to an analysis from Indeed Hiring Lab.

In the U.S., 67% of employees surveyed said learning was a personal priority, while only 48% said it was a priority for their employer.

Notably, workers without a bachelor’s degree were “substantially less likely” to have access to employer-provided training, potentially in part because employers do not expect workers in high-turnover jobs — which often do not require a degree — to stay, according to Indeed.

Indeed’s analysis examined the effects of Spain’s labor market reform from 2022, which restricted use of temporary contracts in hiring workers. 

Occupations that were most dependent on temporary labor saw a major shift to permanent hiring — which also led to large increases in training offers, “providing direct evidence that firms invest more in workers they expect to keep,” Indeed said.

Indeed found the same pattern — workers who already held high qualifications were more likely to receive additional training from employers — in a variety of other countries, according to the analysis; “These patterns suggest that employer-provided training may be reinforcing, rather than narrowing, existing gaps in the labor market.”

Various studies and reports have shown that workers value training, and many cite it as a reason they would stay at an employer for a long time. However, turnover remains an obstacle when it comes to training front-line workers, according to a 2025 report from the Association of Talent Development, making on-the-job training hard to offer in the first place.

Front-line workers also are increasingly hard to retain, especially since many HR-led company programs tend to be created with desk workers in mind, according to a November 2025 Josh Bersin report. For training to work, it needs to be targeted to those specific jobs, the report said — which could, in turn, help retention.

Almost 8 in 10 (79%) millennial knowledge workers are satisfied with their current role, but their loyalty isn’t guaranteed, especially if better pay, clearer growth paths or stronger learning opportunities are on the table, according to recent research by global tech career and training firm General Assembly.

If hiring conditions improve, 49% of the 515 U.S. and UK millennial knowledge workers (aged 29-44) surveyed in December said they would actively begin looking for a new role. Managers are particularly likely to move as well as workers in hospitality, education and professional services.

“Millennials aren’t disengaged — they’re pragmatic. They’re paying attention to the market and weighing whether their current role will support long-term growth,” GA wrote in an analysis.

The message for employers is that if they want to retain experienced, mid-career talent once the job market picks up, they’ll have to provide learning opportunities, internal mobility and career path clarity — not just compensation, GA said.

The findings spell it out. Millennials who are satisfied with their job also said they have a clear path forward, don’t need to leave their company to advance and that their company would support reskilling for a new internal role.

“Career clarity doesn’t just boost engagement — it builds confidence in staying,” GA stressed.

Employees do have higher expectations than in the past, but meeting these expectations boosts retention, SHRM researchers found in a recent survey of U.S. employees and HR professionals.

For instance, among workers who said their employers were addressing their needs, 91% reported job satisfaction. Conversely, more than half of employees at organizations that didn’t do well at meeting workers’ needs said they were at least somewhat likely to leave their job within a year.

According to GA, job satisfaction is strongly connected to internal opportunity, a factor that’s been on everyone’s radar for a while. To counter low turnover and hiring freezes, many HR leaders have shifted their strategy from external hiring to internal mobility, prioritizing upskilling and reskilling, outplacement company Careerminds reported in September 2025.

Employees have also shifted their priorities, according to a January workforce trends report from Adecco. Tangible job security has overtaken personal fulfillment as the top retention factor, with workers now prioritizing stable income, job certainty and “robust” employer support for professional agility, the report said.

Yet, GA’s research found that 39% of employees believe their company overlooks internal candidates, indicating a gap between what employers say they intend to do and what gets implemented, GA noted. 

One reason could be a lack of relevant information, the Adecco report suggested. Its research found that while nearly two-thirds of organizations struggle to transition workers into new internal roles, only a third invest in the data required to understand internal skills and capabilities.

Nearly 70% of employees said they haven’t receive a salary bump in a while, and that number is on the rise, according to a report from global recruitment company Morgan McKinley.

Despite that, nearly half are optimistic that they will get a raise within the next year, the survey of 2,799 workers found.

Yet, 48% of the 214 employers surveyed said their organizations increased pay, and nearly three-quarters said salary increases were planned for specific roles over the next year.

Even increases in pay may not be enough to reduce financial pressures on workers, a June report from Glassdoor Economic Research showed. Early career workers are experiencing negative wage growth as a result of inflationary pressures, per the report.

Morgan McKinley found that more than half of employers kept offers for new hires flat compared to the previous year.

“The findings indicate that employees experience pay stagnation more acutely than employer data alone would imply,” the report said.

That can lead to worker attrition, the report found, with 67% of employers noting employee turnover in the past six months and 19% citing perceptions of pay as a factor.

Morgan McKinley suggested that companies “increase transparency around pay plans and workforce decisions, supported by targeted actions to help close the perception gap and build employee confidence.”

Pay isn’t the only factor affecting retention. More than half of employees surveyed said mental health and well-being support plays into their decision; 71% of employers agreed.

Seemingly, employers are taking action. Sixty-three percent said their companies have upped investment in well-being or mental health support in the past year.

While pay and benefits factor into job quality, workers also said having an interest in their work is predictive of their impression of overall job quality, a June U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report found.

Increasing workers’ paid time off allotment by just a few days can make a big difference, recent research from Florida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University has shown.

Giving workers 6 to 10 days of PTO, not just 1 to 5 days of PTO, significantly reduced resignations — especially for men, a joint study by researchers from FAU and CSU suggested.

The gold standard, it seems, is 11 or more days of PTO. At that rate, both men and women were less likely to quit, research showed.

The report, “Does one week now prevent two weeks notice later? A longitudinal study of paid time off and employee retention,” published in the Journal of Strategy and Management, and is the result of researchers analyzing 18 years of data. 

Why HR wins with PTO

Given the Great Resignation of 2021, strategies to reduce turnover will be crucial to keep in the HR toolbox, researchers implied.

“Moving forward, it will be crucial to carefully weigh the costs of offering PTO against the far greater costs of losing employees, so organizations can make benefits decisions that truly support both their workforce and their bottom line,” Candice Vander Weerdt, a corresponding author and a professor at CSU’s College of Business, said on Thursday.

The release of these findings coincides with another recent report by WTW, which suggests the majority of employers will invest in leave over the next two years. More than half of leaders said they’re prioritizing leave in hopes of attracting new employees and keeping current ones. 

“Leave programs have become a strategic differentiator for employers competing for talent,” Alex Henry, group benefits leader at WTW, said on Monday. “Enhancing leave programs can be a cost-effective way to improve well-being, strengthen culture and meet the evolving expectations of a modern workforce.”

How private employers fill in public policy gaps

Global workplace experts have long suggested that the U.S. is behind in its approach to paid leave. While this conversation tends to highlight the lack of resources for working parents and caregivers, these observations have been applied to PTO in general.

Out of the nearly 40 high-income nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t ensure PTO or paid parental leave for its people, FAU researchers pointed out.

Some states require five days as the minimum amount of PTO and no state mandates more than eight days, LeaAnne DeRigne, the study’s co-author and a professor at FAU’s Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work, observed in a statement released Thursday. 

But FAU and CSU’s findings show “that the strongest retention benefits occur well above those limits,” DeRigne said. “If policymakers and employers want to keep workers, they need to recognize that meaningful time away from work isn’t a luxury — it’s a proven strategy for stability.”

Turnover expectations have climbed sharply in recent years, with 50% of U.S. companies bracing for turnovers in 2026, compared to 39% in fall 2024 and 33% in fall 2023, according to an Express Employment Professionals-Harris Poll survey.

At the same time, the average cost of turnover has risen to $45,236, up from $36,723 last year, per the report. It’s a sign of mounting pressures on companies that are already navigating a competitive labor landscape, the report said.

For employers that anticipate higher turnover in 2026, 32% attribute potential turnover to better pay and benefits offered elsewhere, while 37% point to increased workplace demands leading to more vacancies.

“These findings reinforce something leaders have known intuitively for years — strong company culture isn't just good for people,” Bob Funk Jr., CEO, president and chairman of Express Employment International, said in the release. “It's good for business. When employees feel supported and connected to a healthy work environment, turnover naturally declines. In a year when the cost of replacing a single employee continues to climb, culture has become one of the most financially sound investments any organization can make.”

Amid these concerns about turnover, 75% of hiring managers said they expect their company’s average wage to rise in 2026, with 18% saying they expect wages to remain flat. On the other hand, 46% of job seekers said they expect wages to increase, and 40% said they expect wages to remain the same.

The survey also cited Payscale's 10th annual salary budget survey, which found that U.S. salary budget increases are expected to remain relatively stable at 3.5% in 2026, down just 0.1% from 2025. 

However, workers’ expectations regarding compensation may not be aligned with organizational budgeting. Payscale’s 2025 Pay Confidence Gap Report found that nearly 1 in 5 workers used generative AI to research salaries, and 27% said it inflated their compensation expectations.

Meanwhile, 73% of workers cited increased salary as their top priority for the coming year, according to Monster’s 2026 WorkWatch Report.