Staying Power - Why Your Employees Leave and How to Keep Them Longer

What it’s about

Staying Power confronts a hard truth: employee loyalty has fundamentally eroded, and no amount of nostalgia for 'the way we've always done it' will bring it back. Drawing on her own Millennial mindset and years of consulting across industries, Cara Silletto (with Gen X contributor Leah Brown) explains how generational upbringing—shaped by technology, credit cards, divorce, layoffs, and parenting shifts—created a workforce that thinks and works differently. Rather than blaming younger workers, the book reframes turnover as a leadership and cultural problem employers can address. It quantifies the true and hidden costs of turnover, exposes the 'trees vs. revolving doors' staffing reality, and delivers a concrete M.A.G.N.E.T. framework of strategies and tactics—from management effectiveness to transparency—that won't stop the revolving door but will slow it to a sustainable pace. It's a roadmap for any leader who wants their business to still be thriving in five, ten, or twenty years.

The through-line

Who it’s for

A manager, HR leader, or employer frustrated by constant employee turnover who wants a stable, profitable workforce.

The problem

Excessive employee turnover is eroding the quality, capacity, and profitability of their business. They feel frustrated, blindsided, and unsure why their proven management approach no longer works.

The plan

1. Understand why today's workforce thinks and works differently before applying any tactics.
2. Diagnose the real reasons people are leaving by gathering data instead of assuming.
3. Quantify the true cost of turnover to justify investment in retention.
4. Become a M.A.G.N.E.T. employer through management effectiveness, recruiting, onboarding, new staffing models, empowered champions, and transparency.
5. Continuously evolve management practices alongside the changing workforce.

The payoff

A more unified, harmonious workforce with increased productivity and improved retention. · A business that is still thriving in five, ten, and twenty years. · Becoming a place where people want to work, gaining a recruiting and competitive advantage.

See our guide

• Run Talent And HR Practice That Works →
• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →
• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →
• Build A People Analytics Function →
• Design The Organization And Change It →
• Do Research That Holds Up →
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →

Related profiles we’ve built

• Lead the Work →
• Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage →
• HR From the Outside In →
• A Theory of Human Motivation →
• Anxiety at Work_ 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done →
• Applied Multivariate Stats Social Sciences Stevens →
• Assessing Change in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Children and Adolescents (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy) →
• Basics Qualitative Research Grounded Theory Corbin Strauss →

Additional reading

• Work on Emerging Adulthood · Dr. Jeffrey Arnett

  The book cites Dr. Arnett's research to explain that many behaviors attributed to Millennials (lack of loyalty, short-term thinking) are actually characteristic of a life stage ('Emerging Adulthood', ages 18-25) that is now more prolonged and accepted by society.

• The People Puzzle: Understanding Yourself and Others · Morris Massey

  Referenced to support the foundational concept of generational analysis, specifically Massey's 'where were you when...' approach, which argues that a person's values are shaped by their formative experiences during childhood.

Featured in these guides

• The Behavioral Science Underneath It All →Cited source
• Build A People Analytics Function →Cited source
• Run Talent And HR Practice That Works →Cited source
• Design The Organization And Change It →Cited source
• Study People And Organizations With Scientific Rigor →Cited source
• Do Research That Holds Up →Cited source
• Design Surveys People Answer Honestly →Cited source
• Understand What Drives Individual Performance →Cited source