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Talent Retention Hero

TALENT
RETENTION

Talent Retention Higher Lower

It’s not just important to attract diverse candidates, it’s important to keep them. Understanding what potential new hires, as well as your current staff, want from their roles and organisations can help improve staff retention.

Higher or lower than 2019’s findings?

56% have felt that an interviewer has misled them in the representation or articulation of the company culture - Do you think this is higher or lower than 2019?

Higher

Surprised? There’s actually been no change in professionals feeling misled by interviews since 2019.

Lower

Surprised? There’s actually been no change in professionals feeling misled by interviews since 2019.

Talent Retention First Section

Accurately portraying company culture key to retention

Over half (56%) of employees feel they have been misled in the representation of company culture by an interviewer. This reflects no change from 2019. Furthermore, more than half (53%) of respondents say they have resigned from a job because of a bad cultural fit, only a slight decrease from 56% in 2019. This indicates the importance of communicating an accurate view of what it’s like to work for your organisation to retain a diverse workforce.

Looking closer at the views of different demographics, there are similar sentiments from those part of the LGBTQ+ community (71%), those who identify as having a disability (71%) and those who identify as neurodivergent (70%), who all feel they have been misled by an interviewer. These statistics are higher than overall average, highlighting the issues diverse candidates face during the hiring stage.

Expert insights

Promoting inclusive leadership to achieve DE&I goals

We worked with our manufacturing client to enhance DE&I across the organisation at a fundamental level. By engaging their global leadership and working to mitigate unconscious bias within institutional processes, we were able to amplify the importance of DE&I and reach organisation targets. Read on to find out how.

Talent Retention Second Section

Wellbeing in the workplace

71% of respondents believe positive employee wellbeing is linked to DE&I in the workplace. With this in mind, 21% of employers have combined their employee wellbeing and DE&I resources in the last 24 months, with a further 23% stating they have always combined their resources.

Despite this, of those organisations that do not already combine their employee wellbeing and DE&I resources (27%), over two fifths (44%) say they are not planning to combine them in the future and only 42% of organisations have a dedicated DE&I resource. Involving your wellbeing efforts into your DE&I strategies can put the necessary steps in place to better retain your staff. Ensuring you have a robust coverage for all needs in the workplace can make all the difference in turnover.

71
%
of respondents believe positive employee wellbeing is linked to DE&I in the workplace.

Talent Retention Third Section

Is bias affecting career progression?

In the last five years, there has been a slight improvement in terms of different demographics feeling more confident about their career progression. In 2019, more than half (58%) of employees felt an identifying factor, such as ethnicity, disability, mental health status, age or gender limited their career progression, compared to 56% in 2024.

Age (58%), gender (32%) and ethnicity (31%) are the main factors employees feel have limited their career progression in the last year, no different to the top limiting factors in 2019 (age 50%, gender 35% and ethnicity 34%). 77% of older workers over the age of 50 have felt their career progression has been limited due to their age, compared to just over half (53%) of workers under 30.

There is a noticeable difference between male and female employees when it comes to views about what has negatively impacted their career progression. 42% of women feel their gender has limited their chance to progress compared to 19% of men. A further 18% of women feel being a parent with a dependent child or a carer has caused their career progression to be limited compared to 6% of men. Their ethnicity is identified by 35% of men as a reason for their career progression to stall compared to 27% of women.

However, over the last five years there has been movement towards having a more equal and inclusive work environment. For example, in 2019, 49% of respondents felt their mental health meant they did not have the same career progression opportunities as their equally capable colleagues, compared to 24% in 2024. This also extends to other areas, such as neurodivergent, as 46% of employees felt they did not have equal opportunities as their peers in 2019, with only 21% feeling this way in the last year.

The changing attitudes towards such issues as mental health within the workplace and it not being as limiting a factor for employees’ career progression shows the power of taking positive steps to acknowledge your workforce’s struggles and how it can impact DE&I at work.

In your opinion, which of the following led to your prospects for career progression being limited?

Age

Gender

Ethnicity

Talent Retention Fourth Section

Flexible working options help a diverse workforce, not hinder

Over the last five years, the availability of flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid and remote working have increased, and almost four out of five respondents (79%) feel this has had a positive impact on creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace. These positive sentiments also extend to the growth of collaborative technologies that allow individuals to work together wherever they are based, with 83% highlighting the tech’s positive impact when it comes to fostering diversity and inclusivity at work.

Only 6% of employees believe hybrid and remote ways of working have had a negative impact, and 3% feeling the same about collaborative technologies, showing the benefits of incorporating a more flexible working model where possible.

When splitting by age, 85% of workers under 30 feel the availability of flexible working arrangements has a positive impact on creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces, with workers over 30 feeling slightly less positive (78%). 83% of carers and 81% of parents with a dependent child also feel positively about how flexible working arrangements allows for more inclusive places of work.

What impact have flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid and remote working, had on creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces?

Positive impact

Negative impact

No impact

Talent Retention Fifth Section

Leadership buy-in critical to success

Looking ahead to what employees believe is the most important factor for the future success of DE&I, leadership showing demonstrable commitment to inclusive practices is top of the list, with 32% of respondents stating so. Positively, 82% of employees say that C-suite leaders in their organisation are supportive of DE&I initiatives, of whom 54% believe this has improved over the last five years.

Other factors identified as necessary for the future success of DE&I include better measurement of initiatives designed to improve the employee experience (23%) and organisations clearly communicating the company position on DE&I internally and externally (19%).

Which of the following do you see as the most important factor for the future success of DE&I?

Demonstrable commitment from leadership

32%

Better measurement of initiatives designed to improve the employee experience

23%

Clearly communicating the company position on DE&I internally and externally

19%

Embedding DE&I into existing programmes

15%

Increasing DE&I resource and expertise

8%

Hiring expert consultants to help define priorities

4%

Talent Retention End Section

Looking at the different ways to help keep a diverse workforce, it’s more important than ever to improve talent retention. Now you’ve had a full overview of the many ways to bolster your DE&I efforts across your organisation, read on for Hays’ recommendations and next steps.

Hiring plans Next steps