SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #2633

Purpose-Driven Retention: Merging Human Motivation and Business Strategy

with Brent Turner

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~70 min, distilled

employee retentionpersistencepurpose

"Retention is not actually a strategy, it's only an outcome. Persistence, why someone chooses to stay, is the secret."

What it was about

Retention is not a strategy but an outcome of persistence, and persistence is created when employees can answer yes to three conditions: purpose (why does my work matter), people (relationships), and path (growth) — with leadership and organizational culture as the true starting point, not compensation or perks.

By the numbers

5.6 times more likely to be engaged

Employees with a strong sense of purpose, cited from a Gallup purpose study (2024-2025).

Key notes

Reframe retention as an outcome of persistence, not a strategy in itself, and focus organizational effort on creating the conditions (purpose, people, path) that make employees choose to stay.
Use the 'purpose alignment audit' tool to score domains like whether employees understand how their work contributes to organizational goals, feel respected as whole people, are encouraged to learn, and trust leadership decisions — with the goal being awareness, not measurement.
Map purpose across the full employee life cycle (attract, onboard, develop, contribute, sustain, transition) and identify where purpose strengthens versus breaks at each stage, since purpose is not a single event.

The contrarian takeWork-life balance may not actually exist as a useful goal. Because people are 'whole people all the time,' the real pursuit should be alignment of values with manager and organization, not balance. Retention itself may be the wrong goal entirely, since it's an outcome, not a strategy. And organizations don't actually exist: 'we are the organization.'

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

In 1:1s, ask each employee 'why did you choose to stay?' instead of exit-style questions, to surface what actually creates persistence.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Retention isn't a strategy, it's an outcome of persistence — so we're focusing on purpose, people, and path, not perks.

Watch out for

Treating compensation, pizza parties, and swag as the primary retention levers when they are rarely the root cause of turnover.
Running employee engagement surveys and collecting feedback without taking visible action on it, which erodes trust in leadership.
Letting onboarding become a one-time checklist with an end date rather than a continuous, purpose-reinforcing process.

Fun fact · Kane Carpenter

He's co-author of the book "Moonshot: Hypersonic Business Growth Strategies."

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperOnboard to Engage: Four Critical Questions to Ask Your New HireTurns the 'map purpose across the life cycle' takeaway into four concrete questions for day one.⇄ The counterpointEverything I Know about Solving Today's HR Problems – I Learned from My DogNames trust, not purpose-people-path, as the single root cause under every dysfunction symptom.✦ The unexpected oneAre You Okay? Fight Burnout Using PlaySuggests the missing ingredient in persistence might be play, not purpose.