Drofa Comms is happy to announce that a new op-ed on employee retention was published by our HR Director, Anna Lekomtseva, in The HR Director. Her piece argues why financial motivation is not enough to stop people from resigning.
Why Money Alone Doesn’t Retain Talent
The op-ed opens with an observation most HR leaders recognise instantly. The resignation letter on your desk was never really written that day. As a rule of thumb, the decision was made months earlier. Everyone else, meanwhile, was still congratulating themselves on a good review cycle.
Anna’s argument runs against the instinct most companies default to under pressure — throwing money at the problem. She points to McKinsey research. Employers typically cite pay when staff leave, but the employees who actually walk away rarely say the same thing.
What pushes people out is harder to quantify. It might be a client relationship nobody wants to own, or work that has slowly turned into a conveyor belt. It could also be a growth path nobody has bothered to draw.
The Twice-a-Year Conversation Rule
Her fix isn’t a new perk. Twice a year, she sits down with everyone on her team for a conversation that skips deadlines and KPIs. It centres on three questions:
- which client is draining you
- which project has gone on autopilot
- where do you actually want this to go
Three people naming the same account, she notes, stops being a personality clash and becomes a real problem. And it’s really worth fixing before it turns into an exit.
The Risk of Paying for Loyalty
Anna closes with a warning about relationships built purely on financial motivation and compensation. When a company offers nothing beyond a paycheck, she warns, “there will always be someone to outbid you.”
