Why frontline workers leave – and what employers can do about it

Employers are navigating a lot of uncertainty. Persistent inflation, tariff disruptions, changes to immigration rules and enforcement, and the rapid adoption of AI are creating mounting pressures across industries.

Yet even as many workers "job hug" through this turbulent economy, some employers face a converse, but equally stubborn, challenge: high turnover among frontline workers.

This turnover costs companies both money and valuable employees. Fortunately, it's a solvable problem. Talent Rewire's San Diego-based Employer Action Labs have underscored a simple yet effective solution: listen to workers, take their insights seriously and act on what you learn.

Replacing a frontline employee costs approximately 40% of their annual salary — and the churn is relentless. Annual turnover in 2025 reached 87% in quick-service restaurants, 81% in retail, and 73% in logistics and warehousing. Gallup estimates that voluntary turnover costs US businesses roughly $1 trillion per year.

The conventional explanation is that high turnover is simply the nature of frontline work. But that framing creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: treat workers as replaceable, and they'll act accordingly.

Research from Harvard Business School tells a different story. Companies systematically underestimate their frontline workers' commitment and desire for development. The truth is that workers want to build careers, not just collect paychecks. Forty-two percent of employees who voluntarily left their jobs report that their employer could have prevented their departure. The top reasons for turnover – inadequate pay, lack of advancement opportunities, not feeling seen or valued at work, scheduling inflexibility – are all within an employer's power to address.

Most frontline workers want to stay and build their careers. The problem is that too many organizations wait until workers have already decided to leave before they address retention challenges.

There is a meaningful difference between managing turnover and preventing it. Most retention strategies fall into the first category: exit interviews, engagement surveys, incremental wage adjustments. These are reactive tools that diagnose problems after the damage is done.

Prevention requires something more fundamental: creating space for employees' voice. That means listening to what frontline workers say they need, building psychological safety for honest feedback and, most importantly, acting on what you hear rather than filing away survey results.

This is what Talent Rewire, with support from The James Irvine Foundation, set out to test with the Southern California Employer Action Labs. Five organizations – from healthcare to hospitality to education – created mechanisms for authentic engagement of employees to hear their feedback and ideas through committees, focus groups and employee councils, deliberately structured so workers could speak candidly without fear of repercussions. They then co-designed solutions based on what employees actually said, rather than what management assumed.

The findings were consistent across very different organizations. When employers listened to frontline workers and acted on what they heard, they could identify and address the specific barriers driving turnover in their context.

Rancho Bernardo Inn, a 286-room luxury resort in San Diego, was grappling with a challenge common in hospitality: employees wanted to stay but couldn't see how to advance.

Through Talent Rewire's Action Lab, the inn established a 25-member committee of frontline employees, facilitated by HR staff rather than management, to design surveys, provide feedback and shape the solutions themselves. Employees identified specific barriers: they couldn't see how to move from entry-level roles into management, departmental silos limited their awareness of opportunities, and the existing performance review system – a rigid 1-4 numerical scale – left no room for conversation about their futures. In response, the inn created clear career maps showing pathways across four levels, accessible across all departments. They replaced numerical reviews with conversation-focused templates designed for real dialogue about career aspirations. And they began celebrating employee achievements through signage and internal newsletters across the property.

None of these changes were expensive or technologically complex. What made them effective was that they came directly from the people experiencing the problem. Management didn't guess at what employees needed. They asked, they listened and they built better systems in response.

The specific solutions will vary by organization, industry and workforce. But the approach is simple and transferable. Create mechanisms for amplifying frontline employee voice across the organization. Listen to what employees actually say they need, rather than what you assume they need. Act on what you hear, and move from reactive to proactive.

Frontline workers aren't interchangeable parts in an inevitably high-turnover system. They are strategic assets – and in an economy defined by uncertainty, the employers who will thrive are the ones investing in their people now. The labour market will shift again. Workers will have choices again. The organizations that have built cultures of trust and opportunity will be the ones they choose.