Points of attrition

A guide on how to spot and prevent regrettable talent attrition.

We’ve all had experiences where an employee suddenly comes forward with an offer from another company.

Everything seemed to be going well - until it wasn’t. In most cases, it’s too late to change anything; there’s little you can do to sway the employee’s decision. A bump in compensation or a domain change you offer are less enticing than a complete company reboot.

What happened, and how did you miss it?

The truth is, most employees won’t tell you when something isn’t working. There’s either not enough time for self-reflection, or that experience is lacking - especially with junior employees. Money or title are the most obvious factors, which is why you’ll hear about them first. But less tangible things like satisfaction, workload, or a sense of recognition are rarely put in words. The fact is, these intangibles drive >70% of attrition.

What usually happens is that an employee hits a point of no return and starts looking elsewhere. The emotional baggage just bursts out, wiping out any future prospect of staying with the company.

The sad reality is, most of these “points of no return” could have been avoided. It’s the manager’s job to address them proactively.

I call them “points of attrition” (POAs), and if a manager allows them to go unchecked, there’s a high likelihood the organization’s health will nosedive.

Below, I outline a set of indirect signals to help you spot POAs early and a system to help you turn things around.

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1. Signs it’s too late. Overwork. Victim mentality. Emotional outbursts. Checked out.

2. Attrition progress system. Monitor job satisfaction, relationships and compensation, and identify potential “points of no return” in advance.

Attrition points through the eyes of ChatGPT image gen, loosely inspired by the 1950s minimalist figurative art

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📖 A quick foreword on attrition

Some companies pride themselves for having a low attrition rate.

At the end of the day, the rate itself doesn’t matter. As Reed Hastings concisely framed it:

High attrition isn’t a failure if it’s directional and performance driven.

You might have low attrition, but have an org filled with ambivalent disengaged low-performers. There’s no definite good or bad when it comes to attrition rate benchmarks.

What’s more important is preventing “the regrettable attrition”. A talent loss that could have been prevented if you as a manager was a bit more receptive and proactive.

Hence, the focus of this article is exactly on the unwanted and preventable employee turnover.

⏳ Signs it’s too late

1️⃣ Overwork

I once had a direct report who was defensive toward any novel request. A process change, a new project, or even a status update was perceived as unbearable additional workload. She felt exhausted, overworked, and just generally dissatisfied.

Every time I tried to poke into the problem, the response was, “This is just so much work, I’m so overwhelmed right now.” We tried to dissect it, mapped the root causes, and planned out a course of action. The situation improved, albeit temporarily.

A few weeks in, the same problems came back with a vengeance. She was overworked and felt under constant pressure in the organization.

Fast forward a couple of months, she came back with an offer from a different company. All my attempts to dissuade her with money and new areas of responsibility were fruitless. It was just too late.

And it wasn’t only about overwork. Excess workload was just a familiar concept she could attach herself to. It was emotional baggage that had started overflowing.

2️⃣ Victim mentality

An employee blaming other people, processes, or the company in general isn’t necessarily a narcissist. A more subtle expression of a victim mentality might indicate they are approaching an attrition point.

Statements like, “I should have been promoted, but those management A-holes are just too blind to see it,” or, “We are so underpaid for the amount of work we do,” or, “They just don’t appreciate us, we’re so understaffed,” are all signals of victimhood.

In most cases, it’s not really about the specific situation the employee is blaming. It’s pent-up emotional energy that has been bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed.

3️⃣ Emotional outbursts

We had a regular alignment meeting on a project; it went fine or so it seemed to me. After the meeting, one of my direct reports came to me and said she couldn’t take it anymore. Operations weren’t listening, they were playing their own game — it was impossible to work. She was brimming with conflicting emotions.

I dived in, helped with alignment, and got everyone on the same page. Collaboration improved. No more paralyzing conflict — there was constructive talk and progress.

Fast forward a few weeks, she came to me with an offer from a competing company. Wow. I had misread the signal. The situation with operations was just the tip of the iceberg. That emotional cocktail had been boiling for weeks, if not months. By the time we had that discussion, it was already too late.

Over the years I’ve noticed a definite pattern. If you’re having an emotionally charged conversation with your direct report (it might involve tears, yes), you have to act now or start counting down weeks until she will resign.

4️⃣ Checked out

If your employee is just creating a visibility of performance while struggling to keep focus, there’s high likelihood it’s a defense mechanism.

When an emotional outburst is “fight”, then checkout is a “freeze” response to the unbearable weight of negatively charged emotions.

There might be different underpinning currents to this - be it bad relationships with stakeholders or reservations around recognition, but the consequence is mostly the same. You have an employee that is just existing, typing something into the computer, not engaged or taking initiative. Because why bother, right?

While checkout syndrome is possible to revert, you have to act fast as a manager and address the issues.

⚙️ Attrition progress system

Approach

A holistic approach would be to continuously monitor the following indicators for each employee:

• Job Satisfaction (which can be broken down into Recognition, Growth, Values, Vision, and Scope of Control - you can find more about it in one of my previous articles) has the biggest influence on attrition at ~50%. Strong empirical evidence for this number is provided in the meta-analysis by J.K. Harter and F.L. Smith covering an astounding 8k organizations;

• Relationships have been highlighted separately because peer and stakeholder relationships can have an outsized impact on engagement. A single toxic employee or a stubborn stakeholder can make a dramatic difference. Relationships play a large role ~30% influence on attrition (with evidence coming from the massive study, encompassing 80k manager interviews by M. Buckingham, C. Coffman);

• Compensation is the factor with the least influence. It’s not a long-term driver of motivation, but it can absolutely be a factor of “demotivation”, disrupting both satisfaction and relationships. Money has ~20% impact on attrition, but it can negatively influence satisfaction, bringing overall engagement down (for more info please look into the study here).

I’m making a detailed graph for illustrative purposes only. I highly doubt that a busy manager will have time to make these detailed plots for each direct report. It should help you make directional conclusions.

Looking here, the job started well with 80%+ overall satisfaction and then dipped to <40% by month 9. The biggest driving factor was the satisfaction score (you'll need to unpack growth, recognition, scope of control, and other potential root causes).

This was the real attrition point (~8 month) after which recovery was unlikely. After this diving line the employee was simply dragging back to work and simply sustained. Perhaps due to the lack of the better options on the market. Yes, this can take months or years. But you will get reduced output from such disengaged employees.

Relationships gradually declined, but I’d assume in this case it was because the employee was too disengaged to do something about it.

By months 12-13, there was an attempt to provide a salary bump, which made a small temporary improvement, but didn’t save the situation overall.

Process

The process is strikingly simple. Yet very few managers actually do it.

Reserve 5–10 minutes in each monthly 1‑to‑1 with your reports and prompt self‑reflection with questions such as:

How do you feel in general?

What are you lacking?

What would you change in your team?

What would you change in your organization?

How are the relationships with your peers? stakeholders?

I usually avoid asking about money for two reasons. First, employees almost always raise compensation themselves. Secondly, mentioning it first can make them assume you are considering an immediate salary increase.

Accept the inevitable

There will always be situations where you can’t prevent turnover.

For example, you might join the company after an employee has already passed their personal “point of no return,” or one of your direct reports may receive a once‑in‑a‑lifetime offer elsewhere.

Accept these cases and move on. The process above is not a silver bullet, but it can still spare you a great deal of regrettable talent loss.