They’re already making other plans

For most of the last century, the employment ‘agreement’ held a particular shape. You give us your time and loyalty. We give you security, a predictable path, and something that looks like a future.

It certainly wasn’t thrilling, but it was credible. Businesses built careers around it, while employees built lives around it. Pensions created some level of security, and progress through the company was real. Stick around long enough, do the work, and the deal eventually pays out.

Both sides had trust, and that’s what held it together. And quite often it was never really about the money. It was about the uncertainty. Plus, after periods of economic instability, the offer of a steady job with a clear horizon was something people could build a life around. They understood exactly what they were trading: time and loyalty for predictability and security.

The silent renegotiation

As we pushed into the 21st century, this ‘contract’ slowly got renegotiated, one generation at a time.

My generation (Gen X) pushed for more autonomy over how the work got done. We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; it was about just wanting more say in the process, even if the end result stayed the same.

The generations that followed arrived with a different baseline. They’d grown up watching their parents get made redundant in restructures, watching companies that preached loyalty cut entire departments without hesitation. They expected their contribution to matter from the start. The idea that you’d earn the right to that eventually had already stopped making sense.

None of this was dramatic because each change was incremental enough to ignore. So most businesses kept offering the same contract: loyalty in exchange for security, without stopping to ask whether security still meant what it used to, or whether people were still trading in loyalty at all.

The 2008 financial crisis accelerated everything. There were mass redundancies, with large businesses that had spent years building cultures around loyalty and mutual commitment cutting entire management levels or departments overnight. People who had given decades watched colleagues with equally long careers go within a week. The survivors of the reorganisation watched, too, and the expectation (and pressure) kept growing. Do more for the same pay. Fewer and fewer people felt they were part of something.

AI as the accelerant

This is where it gets specific to right now.

Employees are watching AI arrive inside their businesses. They see tasks being automated and junior roles quietly disappearing. They watch investment decisions get made and do what people have always done: figure out what those decisions say about how the business sees them.

Some feel like they’re part of the plan. They understand what’s changing, can see where their skills fit into what’s coming next, and sense that the business is thinking about their future as it reshapes. Those people are probably fine.

The rest are drawing their own conclusions. Silently. They are still showing up, still performing, still looking fine on the outside. In the background, they’re running the numbers, figuring out their options, deciding whether to wait and see or get ahead of it. When someone in that second group gets a call from a recruiter, the conversation doesn’t take long.

Some businesses I’ve worked with haven’t had this conversation with their teams. Yes, there’s been an announcement, a training session, possibly an internal update. But the actual conversation, “here’s what we’re doing with AI, here’s how we’re thinking about your role, here’s what we see for you in this”, hasn’t happened. The gap between what the business has decided internally and what’s been said out loud is exactly where trust starts to erode.

What I keep hearing from senior people is that they’re watching how their business handles AI more than they’re reacting to the technology itself. They’re using it as a read on whether leadership has actually thought about people in this, or just about efficiency. The businesses losing experienced people aren’t losing them because of the technology. They’re losing them because of what the technology revealed about the relationship.

What the new “contract” should look like

Pay does matter, particularly in the cost-of-living crisis. Get it wrong, and people leave. Get it right, and you’ve only really cleared the minimum bar. Nothing more.

The new contract runs on visible growth and honest conversation. People need to see where they’re going and understand what the business is doing and what it means for them. The work itself needs appreciation: something someone can point to and say, I helped build that.

The businesses getting this right are those where leaders have direct, specific conversations about the future, and where people can see their own progress in the day-to-day work, not just in a forced annual review. These leaders are introducing AI with genuine thought about what it means for the people, alongside what it saves the business.

Making this change doesn’t require big people programs or wholesale restructuring. But leaders need to be willing to have honest conversations they’ve been avoiding. That’s usually the harder part. Experienced people need to know their knowledge is being used. That the work they’re doing is building something, rather than just holding something in place, the moment that question starts to play in their mind, their thinking shifts. By the time it surfaces in an exit interview, the decision had already been made months earlier.

Where most businesses are standing

Mark did the pay review in January, supported flexible working, and even organised a team away day in April. But by September, three of his most experienced people had handed in their notice.

His underlying instinct wasn’t wrong: invest in the people. Businesses are doing the right things on retention, yet still losing people, and blaming it on the market. The actual problem is older and less comfortable than that.

Mark cared. He just answered questions his people weren’t asking.

The away day was fine, and of course, the flexible working was welcome. But neither addressed what his experienced people were actually thinking about: whether this was still the right place to invest their best years.

The retention strategies most businesses reach for remove reasons to leave. Reasons to stay come from somewhere different: visible growth and honest conversation about what the future actually holds. And in a market where employees are watching their roles get reshaped in real time, the gap between “not quite enough reason to leave yet” and “actively looking” is smaller than it’s ever been.

When did you last ask your people what they’re getting from your relationship with them?

Most leaders measure contribution constantly.

Almost none of them ask the question before someone has mentally left.

Ask it before the exit interview forces the answer.

Have a brilliant week!

Dave Rogers, The Business Explorer

If this struck a chord, my Substack goes further on the same questions. Want help applying any of it to your business? Book a call.

Need a speaker who’ll bring a fresh perspective? Reach me at info@fuelledfitandfiredup.com.

If you’re after silver-bullet promises, I’m not your guy. If you’d rather have grounded advice and better questions, you’re in the right place.