The Workforce Is Shifting

Here’s How Employers Are Getting Ahead of It

Organizations across industries are feeling the effects of a workforce that refuses to stay static. Employees are entering and exiting more quickly, managers are being asked to support increasingly complex teams, and seasoned leaders are beginning to transition out—often taking institutional knowledge with them. Even when head counts look steady, the underlying dynamics tell a different story: Employers must prepare now for what comes next, not just react to what’s happening today.

MRA’s 2026 Turnover Survey surfaces the signals leaders should be watching. Total turnover is 21.7%, but the pressure isn’t evenly distributed. The most strained groups—production, maintenance, service, and trades roles—face 28.4% turnover, making them the hardest areas to stabilize and the most disruptive when churn occurs.

At the same time, a quieter long-term shift is underway at the top of organizations. Retirement accounts for 41% of voluntary executive departures, reinforcing how essential it is to plan not just for positions but for knowledge continuity across critical roles.

Layered on top of these trends is an early tenure challenge: 65% of employees who leave do so within their first one to two years, highlighting the ongoing need for stronger onboarding, clearer expectations, and more intentional early experience design.

In response, employers aren’t leaning on a single strategy. Instead, they’re investing in three people-first approaches that support employees today while building a more resilient talent pipeline for tomorrow.

1. Engagement Surveys: Listening to Understand Today’s Workforce

One of the clearest themes in the data is that organizations need better visibility into why employees stay—and why they leave. In several roles, “don’t know/not collected” appears in a meaningful portion of voluntary separation responses, reaching up to 29% in some clerical groups.

This gap matters. Without reliable insight into the employee experience, organizations can’t easily diagnose issues in communication, workload, leadership support, or career development.

That’s why more employers are investing in engagement and experience surveys as cornerstone tools for understanding the real dynamics shaping their workforce. These surveys allow leaders to catch issues long before they appear in turnover metrics, giving them the ability to act on specific themes rather than assumptions.

And it’s not just a best practice—listening is becoming a strategic priority. In MRA’s HR Trends research, 36% of organizations plan to conduct an employee engagement or satisfaction survey, reflecting a broader shift toward proactive workforce insight.

2. Leadership Development: Strengthening the Managers Who Shape Daily Experience

If engagement surveys help organizations understand what’s happening, leadership development helps them address it.

Employees don’t experience “the organization”—they experience their managers. And turnover drivers in the survey repeatedly point back to manager effectiveness: performance issues, communication breakdowns, attendance challenges, lack of support, and gaps in expectations all show up across employee groups.

Employers are responding by strengthening leadership skills at all levels. According to the Turnover Survey, 54% of organizations plan to increase investment in manager training and development, one of the largest areas of planned growth.

Leadership development in many organizations now focuses on strengthening the core skills leaders need to support teams effectively—clear communication, effective decision-making, handling difficult situations, building trust, and creating healthy team dynamics. Alongside this, individual coaching is increasingly used to help leaders deepen self-awareness, navigate challenges, and apply these skills in real time. Strong leadership at every level has become one of the most reliable predictors of retention, and a critical link between what engagement surveys reveal and the everyday behaviors that shape the employee experience.

3. Succession Planning: Preparing for Leadership Transitions Before They Happen

While turnover challenges often appear most visibly in early career roles, leadership transitions are shaping the long-term workforce picture. With 41% of executive voluntary separations tied to retirement, employers are beginning to take a more structured approach to preparing for eventual role changes and knowledge transfer.

This doesn’t always mean a complex, enterprise wide program. Many organizations are taking a more agile approach by:

• mapping critical positions,
• identifying potential successors, and
• creating simple knowledge transfer plans.

In fact, 41% of organizations report plans to improve or implement career and succession planning efforts, indicating a growing recognition that leadership continuity is essential to long-term stability.

A More Intentional Workforce Strategy—Now and for the Future

When taken together, these three strategies form a practical and interconnected approach:

• Engagement surveys reveal what employees are experiencing right now.
• Leadership development improves the day-to-day interactions that influence performance and retention.
• Succession planning ensures organizations are ready for the leadership and knowledge transitions already on the horizon.

The workforce may be shifting, but organizations that invest intentionally in their people—listening to them, developing them, and planning for their future—are better positioned to thrive through whatever comes next.