HBR Guide to Retaining Your Best People
Various Contributors with HBR Editors
Harvard Business Review Press (August 5, 2025)
On average, the total cost of replacing a peak performer is about six times that employee’s annual compensation.
This is another volume in one of the several series of anthologies of HBR articles previously published by Harvard Business Review Press. The focus in this one is on retaining your best people.
If you were to purchase each of the 27 articles as a reprint, the total cost would be about $270. The cost of this volume if purchased from Amazon is only $21.28. That’s not a bargain. That’s a steal.
Are you looking for timely and timeless material that offers cutting-edge thinking on the subject of RETENTION OF YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSETS…from material organized within a single, portable source? Look no further.
Here’s what the world-class authorities who contributed to this volume have learned and are eager to share with you in detail:
GETTING STARTED
o Why peak performers quit
o Why it’s time to reimagine employee retention
o How and why onboarding can make or break a new hire’s experience
CONNECT With YOUR TEAM
o How to determine if an employee is happy at work
o Do your employees feel that they really matter? How do you know?
o Five questions to help your people find their inner purpose
o How are teams retaining the best people now?
MOTIVATE and ENGAGE
o Should your stars get the star treatment? Yes or no? Why or why not?
o Peak performers also need (and deserve) feedback. How to do that?
o How to retain and engage B Players
o How to motivate when you can’t promote people? Most effective dos and don’ts
o Do you appreciate your best employees? Do they “get it”? How do you know?
PRIORITIZE DEVELOPMENT and LIFELONG LEARNING
o How to boost retention through personal development
o How to discuss with your team members about their career development
o Is your team understimulated? Try task trading.
o How Gen AI could accelerate employee learning
o How to invest in and nourish the development of young, remote employees
ADJUST THEIR WORK (and Workload)
o Are you protecting your peak performers from burnout?
o How to let your employees job craft
o How Gen AI can make work more fulfilling
o How to retain employees by supporting their passions outside work
REINVENT RETENTION in YOUR ORGANIZATION
o Where and how measurement of engagement goes wrong
o Are retention bonuses cost-effective?
o Why most mentoring programs fail to retain talent.
o Why it’s time to eliminate “dry promotions”
o How and why a strong sense of shared purpose can make almost any company a “magnet for talent”
I agree with the HBR Editors whose brilliant talents are seldom acknowledged but consistently of incalculable value to knowledge leadership: “Employees have a sea of options when it comes to where and how they work, and if they’re getting what they want, they’ll move on. If the threat of having your top performers working for the opposition isn’t bad enough, high turnover can inflict serious financial and emotional costs on your company.
“The HBR Guide to Retaining Your Best People offers concrete advice and tactics to keep valuable employees engaged and loyal to your organization. You’ll discover how to meet their intrinsic needs, create opportunities for career development, and build a workplace where they want to excel.”
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Here are two suggestions while you are reading HBR Guide to Retaining Your Best People: First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to all checklists of sequential action steps needed to achieve the given objective, such as making employees feel that they belong and are valued.
These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.