When we talk about talent trends, retention — especially of Gen Z — always surfaces. In the United States, median tenure has dropped to 3.9 years, with younger employees changing jobs more often than older ones. Other countries show longer stays (South Korea at 5.9 years, Italy at 12.2), but the trajectory is clear: frequent movement is the new normal.

How should your company respond? Consider three strategies:

1. Buck the trend.

Remain immune to these shifts. Some leaders ask, “Why not hire older, more stable talent?” or “Can we deter movement with non-compete clauses?” But these options are limited. Indeed, younger employees job hop more often than those with more experience (2.8 years for Gen Z vs. 9.8 years for Gen X in the US), similarly women – more often than men (3.6 vs. 4.2). But hiring only those less likely to leave, shrinks an already tight talent pool and might get you into legal trouble. Non-competes rarely stick, and companies increasingly lose talent not to the competition, but to alternative employment models. Employees leave traditional jobs in favor of freelancing, entrepreneurship, and portfolio work.

To buck the trend, you may have a chance to create your own market—by, for example, moving operations to areas where demographic mobility is low and you’re a preferred employer. But unless you are lucky and plans are already underway, don’t bet on it. Instead, consider virtual and non-synchronous work, which can yield unexpected benefits: access to more highly skilled labor, wage differentials stemming from currency or tax variations, and broader workforce diversity. All of this contributes to the “experience dividend” that comes with greater stability.

2. Double down on retention.

One may view retention efforts as a type of bucking the trend, as it’s still trying to beat the averages by enticement to stay longer, but there is a major difference. In #1, it’s about changing the market: contract, players, location. Here, it’s about influencing your people.

The core idea here is to over-invest in keeping employees in the company. If they are productive, happy, and learning, why would they jump on the job-hopping bandwagon?

“Pay them more!” Sure. P&L allowing, you can pay above the market to put “golden handcuffs” on your employees. You can even throw in retention bonuses or anniversary gifts. But those are costly, underappreciated, and easily matched by the new employer. Money is important, but it is often not the problem. The key reason why people leave is dissatisfaction with:

• Career development
• Compensation and benefits
• Leadership and management
• Company culture
• Engagement at work
• Work-life balance

Now, rate the strength of these factors at your organization on a 1-5 scale, where 1 = poor and 5 = best in class. What do the results tell you? Which areas of improvement should you prioritize to convince those contemplating a move that the best choice for them personally is actually to stay.

Good news: improving in these areas is a good idea no matter what. If those aren’t optimized, the business will struggle to orchestrate execution and maintain a positive external reputation.

Will retention be enough to meet the trend? Not quite. CEB research showed that the drivers of retention are the same as the drivers of attrition. Employees join because they are promised respect, growth, career, autonomy… They leave because they lack respect, growth, career, autonomy… It’s hard work building systems that deliver a healthy high-performance culture, competent bosses, meaningful work, and engaged employees who feel in control of their careers. It can’t be delivered in a year or two. And you may not have the time.

So, many may end up with a combination of the longer-term work on securing retention to increase average tenure, and a more novel approach: teaching employees how to make good career decisions. Career management skills won’t prevent all departures, but they can help ensure that those who do leave have fully leveraged the advantages of continuity—everything from greater effectiveness and service-related benefits to fewer transition risks and disruptions. Educated career decisions serve employers and employees alike.

3. Embrace the new career models.

If short tenures are the new normal, accept them. Organizations will need to adapt to this new reality. Yes, organizations. Today, employees have options. Pursuing a career on their terms, they vote with their feet for greater flexibility, agency, and finding stability in movement.

What exactly do we mean by embracing the new career models? It is a systemic effort to align the existing — and potentially implement new — ways of managing the employee lifecycle that reflect the new reality of shorter tenures.

Let us give you an example of when a career model was fundamentally changed last time. The system of life-long employment was retired in the 1980s. As a result of that change in how we see the relationship between the employer and the employees, a series of structural, policy, process, and other changes occurred. Pension schemes shifted from a guaranteed payout (company’s responsibility) to defined contributions (employees assume the risk). Philosophies and solutions of ensuring employees’ security and safety gave way to focus on cost efficiency, outsourcing, and offshoring. Back then, organizations told their employees: “The responsibility for your career is now your own. Make your own choices”. Today, employees do exactly what they were told. Why is it so surprising?

Once again, a fundamental shift in how we view the relationship between the employer and the employees is likely to happen. We believe that by embracing the trend and adapting, companies have a better chance to keep pace with the external context and lead the way with forward-looking, win-win approaches.

Turning “disloyalty” into advantage

First, the solution must be unique to you. Companies are affected by the trend in different ways. If you run a factory in a small remote town and people don’t leave, probably embracing new is premature. Try articulating the “why” for implementing the new approach. If the “why” is fuzzy and unconvincing, your time may be best spent elsewhere.

Second, if the “why” is clear and compelling, start garnering support. Socialize it with all the key stakeholders and expect resistance. You are basically asking them to update their mental Operating System, and it will require budget, time, and help. Pushback is normal and expected: most of us think about work relationships as they have been since the 1980s, and even earlier. Leaders might try to discredit your case by providing anecdotal evidence (“I did everything right, and she still left!”), claim validity of their personal philosophies (“It’s always worked for me“), or ascribing the problem to failures in HR processes (“You hire wrong people“). Be prepared, be patient. It’s not just installing an app, it’s upgrading the device to a new version.

Third, once the approval has been obtained, plan execution. Create and socialize the governance structure, budget, plans for project management, change management, training, and  communication. 

As a best practice, at the beginning of the process, hold a design thinking session to strengthen connections and network, align on the business case, philosophy and approach, project leadership, measures, constraints and risks. At the core of the session, we scrutinize the existing processes, identify and prioritize improvement ideas, agree on R&Rs, ways of working,  for implementation across all the employee processes. For instance (illustration only):

• Employee Value Proposition: adjust to include the idea that we are a great place to work, “whether you join for a month or for a career”.
• Hiring: reduce importance of job hopping as a red flag in hiring decisions; optimize onboarding processes to minimize time to full performance.
• Talent Management: strengthen talent assessment capability to hold accurate data on potential of new hires and minimize the use of “Not Rated” designations (explore AI-powered solutions to improve our ability to gauge potential correctly at point of hiring); remove role permanency requirements to make an internal move (with an average of 3.9 years, saying “you must stay 3 years in the role before applying for another” is a sure way to direct that application externally).
• Performance Management: eliminate the practice to assign the low performance rating to the newest team member (“beginner’s miss”); increase agility and frequency so that newcomers benefit from the system to perform and grow ASAP.
• Learning and Development: improve scalability of learning solutions to maximize the reach to all employees (if people will leave earlier, companies must extract value quicker, which requires provision and acceleration of core career management drivers, such as designing a career plan, doing great work, or being a rewarding colleague and a positive networker).
• Compensation and Benefits: review the current total rewards offering to identify opportunities to rebalance the attractiveness of its short-term and long-term elements.
• Organizational Effectiveness: nurture relationships with former employees (e.g., McKinsey and LinkedIn run alumni communities. They know that the decision to leave does not equal disloyalty. Research at Cornell shows that hiring boomerangs is a good strategy. If people are going to leave more often, it may be wise to be ready to welcome them back more often, too). So, instead of pouring all of your resources into exit interviews, direct some energy to “alumni management.” Treat ex-employees—especially strong performers—as a valuable talent pool you continuously engage. Remove the stigma of “job hopping” for returning team members, allowing them to develop elsewhere and return when the right role arises.

These are merely examples to provide an idea. In reality, there will be many more potential solutions, forcing us to prioritize according to their impact and ease of implementation.

Finally, implement and communicate. This is a fantastic opportunity to reinvigorate several topics dear to the employees – career, development, autonomy.

Unfortunately, many great initiatives fail because employees are unfamiliar or misinformed, resist, or sabotage.  Ask colleagues with expertise in Marketing and Change Leadership for guidance and ideas on how to put the employee in the center and use transparency to regain trust in the organization’s commitment to the success of every one of their employees, candidates, alumni, partners. Creating a unique brand identity for this initiative is a smart move to open lines of communication and reframe from dreaded mandatory HR processes to strategically investing in their career success.

Conclusion

Companies can try to shield themselves from rapid turnover or sweeten deals to keep people longer—but those tactics only work so far. The smarter move is to meet employees where they are. Embrace shorter tenures and shape a model that turns frequent movement into a strategic advantage. The companies that adapt will attract the best talent on any timeline and build a more resilient, future-ready organization. Here are your options—push against the trend, fight harder to retain, or embrace reality. The right path depends on your unique context, but the opportunity to evolve is undeniable.

Disclaimer: The opinions are ours and not those of affiliated organizations.