Is Your Workforce Stable or Stuck?
For years, workforce planning conversations were dominated by concerns about people leaving. There were skills shortages, recruitment challenges, and The Great Resignation. Succession risk was a real concern. Organisations were worried about attracting and retaining talent in an increasingly competitive market.
Today, the landscape has changed. Many businesses appear to be facing a different challenge: people aren’t leaving!
There are positives to this. Less turnover means lower recruitment costs, greater stability, and reduced disruption. However, stability and engagement are not necessarily the same thing.
Employees appear to be staying put (employment indicators for June 2026 showed most industries with filled job percentages up) for reasons that have little to do with career satisfaction. Economic uncertainty, rising living costs, family commitments, concerns about future job prospects, and the rapid pace of technological change are all encouraging people to think twice before making a move. This Seek research showed that while 41% of NZers are comfortable making a career change, but only 6% are actively looking at ways to make it happen.
For some, staying is a conscious and positive choice. For others, it may simply feel like the safest option available.
Here's what to consider when building a stable and engaged workforce...
Workforce planning is more than numbers in and out
Workforce planning is often viewed as a numbers exercise: how many people do we need? How many are likely to retire? What skills do we need to recruit?
Those questions are important, but the answers only tell part of the story. Numbers coming and numbers going out are a rough indication of what a workforce needs, but good planning must also look at what’s going on in between entry and exit.
Effective workforce planning is ultimately about capability. More specifically, it is about understanding how capability moves through an organisation over time. When experienced people leave without transferring knowledge, capability is lost.
Capability can also become trapped when people stop moving altogether.
Workforce trends are creating capability bottlenecks
Many organisations are currently experiencing a collision of trends that affect workforce planning. People are remaining in the workforce longer. Mid-career employees are becoming more cautious about changing jobs. Economic conditions are encouraging stability rather than risk-taking. At the same time, younger employees are looking for development opportunities, progression, and greater responsibility.
Individually, none of these trends are problematic. Together, however, they can create bottlenecks as promotions become infrequent and succession opportunities narrow. Emerging leaders must wait longer for meaningful development experiences, while knowledge remains concentrated in a smaller number of people rather than being shared across the business.
The issue is not that experienced workers are staying. In fact, retaining experience is often enormously valuable. There is challenge in ensuring that capability continues to flow through the organisation rather than becoming concentrated in a few key roles or individuals.
Stability can hide some concerns
Low turnover is often celebrated as a sign of organisational health. And sometimes, that’s true! A stable workforce often indicates a strong culture, meaningful work, capable leadership, and good development opportunities. Most organisations aim to be a place people WANT to work.
However, low turnover in the current climate can hide other issues.
Employees may be delaying career decisions because the alternatives feel uncertain. Others may feel they have limited opportunities for growth but choose to remain because the financial risks of moving are too high.
Over time, this can lead to a workforce that appears stable on paper but is gradually becoming less adaptable, less engaged, and less prepared for future change.
Capability development retains value and creates resilience
Many workforce plans focus on vacancies that need to be filled. However, the larger picture is capability and whether it’s developing at the pace the organisation requires.
Are future leaders gaining experience? Are critical skills being transferred? Are career pathways visible? Are employees developing new capabilities or simply becoming more experienced in the same role? The existence of progression opportunities ensures you’re keeping talent and also valuable organisational IP. Bringing in new people to fill gaps is always a viable option, but they won’t know your processes inside and out.
Can the business respond if key people leave unexpectedly? A deep bench is crucial to resilience. Developing skills can be more than a response to a promotion; it can be a way to safeguard against single-person dependencies.
Building movement can keep your people interested
Encouraging employees to leave is not the solution here! The way forward is simply to create movement within your organisation. Don’t let things stagnate.
That might involve:
- secondments and project opportunities
- mentoring relationships
- cross-functional exposure
- leadership development
- succession planning
- capability development pathways
- knowledge transfer initiatives
People do not always need a new employer to remain engaged. They may just need opportunities to continue learning, contributing, and growing.
Questions worth asking
As part of workforce planning, organisations should consider:
- Where is capability concentrated?
- Which roles have no realistic succession pathway?
- How effectively are we transferring knowledge and experience?
- Are career pathways visible and achievable?
- What opportunities exist for employees to broaden their capability?
- Do we understand why people are staying, not just why they leave?
Workforce planning has traditionally focused on replacing people who leave, but organisations may need to pay equal attention to what happens when they don’t. Stable is good, stuck is not!
If you need help with workforce planning that creates stability and not stagnation, get in touch to find out how Emendas can be of assistance.