Riddle: Find the Hole in SHRM’s Annual State of the Workplace Report

Just this morning…so as they say, breaking news here…SHRM published their 2025 State of the Workplace Report.[i] Per the publication, the report draws on insights from 1,615 HR professionals, 238 HR executives, and 471 U.S. workers, and their findings encapsulate multiple perspectives to assess HR’s effectiveness across 16 HR practice areas.

The top finding is Recruiting a Persistent but Common Challenge. The report further describes this #1 HR challenge:

In 2024, recruiting was the top priority for HR, fueled by the ongoing challenge of attracting top talent in a market where job openings outnumber individuals actively seeking work. Given these conditions, it is unsurprising that only a portion of HR professionals and U.S. workers viewed their organization’s recruiting efforts as effective. These staffing challenges resulted in heavier workloads for some employees, ultimately driving higher burnout rates.

Recruiting tops all other topics which include talent analytics, future of work, employee experience, technology, C-suite/board relations, and more. And not only is recruiting the top challenge, but the description provided above makes clear that most HR professionals who were surveyed do not think their recruiting function is working well.

As a “recovering HR director”, I have clear memories of how my HR team and I would respond to such a report. Armed with a white board and marker, we would identify new ways to recruit, read a best-practices article or two, develop a report, and present that report to the executive team. And then go on the recruit maybe a little bit better but probably not very much.

——

Further reading: Message at SHRM24: Stay Interviews Require Accountability

——

A Quiz Question That Leads to A Riddle

So to get to our riddle, let’s propose a quiz question with an obvious right answer. Which would be better for your company, in the short-term and especially in the long-term?

1. Continue to improve recruiting as best you can.
2. Improve employee retention so you don’t have to recruit as much.

Every single HR professional I know would choose B. But then they would ask how to improve retention given their limited budgets for pay, benefits, and the rest.

So our riddle is, Where did improving retention rank on SHRM’s list? And the answer is that there is no mention of improving retention or improving turnover on SHRM’s list of 16 practice areas, and those were the topics that were offered for this survey.

So if we take this discussion one step further, the clearly best solution for HR’s loudly-declared greatest problem appears to be less important than, let’s say, C-suite/board relations. Or than future of work. Or any of the other SHRM practice list. This is indeed a head-scratcher, even for my balding head.

——

Further reading: The Room-Silencing Question at SHRM Las Vegas

——

Seeing Light Through the Dark

In fairness, though, there is a clear reason for this massive oversight. And that reason is that until now employee retention has been seen as a combination of doing the rest of the list. Using some other list examples, employee turnover will improve if you do for example performance management/total rewards/talent management/learning and development, and more.

Reality, though, tells us that assumption is false. Because if it were true, then recruiting wouldn’t be so hard because employee retention would be making recruiting easier. But employee turnover continues to be high, while employee engagement is at an 11-year low.

It’s time, then, for employee retention to earn its well-deserved promotion to every important HR list, including SHRM’s practice list. To earn this promotion, employee retention needs a true fix, a research-based solution that as a solid track record of success, and here it is:

Convert turnover to dollars, develop retention goals, and then hold first-line leaders accountable to achieve those goals. Train those leaders to conduct Stay Interviews with each member of their teams to develop individual stay plans, and teach them also to forecast how long each employee will stay. Then hold those leaders accountable for achieving their retention goals and developing accurate forecasts.

For HR to do this, they must find the courage to influence their executive teams to say “yes”. HR must walk across the bridge from the HR-only side versus develop more of the same regarding onboarding, new benefits, and even fresher pay studies…because research tells us the #1 employees stay or leave is how much they trust their boss. HR can’t do this unless they build the case for executives to hold those bosses accountable for retention, as well as for engagement.

This is the way to improve recruiting…and it’s the permanent way.

Employee Retention for Organizational Success

Now is the time to plan how you will retain your best workers now to mitigate the numbers you will need to hire in the future. If you know you need to address turnover or improve engagement but aren’t sure where to start, email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and I promise to help you start your employee retention strategy now, so you can see results this year.

---

[i] https://www.shrm.org/content/dam/en/shrm/topics-tools/research/2025-shrm-state-of-the-workplace-research-report.pdf