In a recent post, I talked about using CliftonStrengths to attract diverse talent and build belonging from day one. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: hiring diverse talent is just the beginning. The real test of an organization’s commitment to inclusion isn’t who you bring in—it’s who stays.

Where I work in Maine, we’re facing an urgent workforce challenge: we need 75,000 new skilled professionals by 2029. With our population becoming increasingly diverse—an 81% increase in residents from racially diverse backgrounds between 2010 and 2020—the question isn’t just how to attract this talent. It’s how to keep them.

And right now, we’re not doing a great job.

The Retention Gap That Nobody Talks About

The numbers tell a story that many organizations don’t want to hear. Research shows that half of diverse employees have left or wanted to quit because company culture was unwelcoming, with 68% believing this was due to their gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, or neurodevelopmental condition.

Even more telling? 30% of new employees leave within three months. Think about that. You invest time and resources into finding great talent, convince them to join your team, and before the onboarding period is even over, they’re already looking for the exit.

This isn’t about compensation alone. While pay matters, recent retention studies reveal that toxic or negative work environments are the leading reason employees leave, cited by over 32% of departing employees. Poor leadership and dissatisfaction with management follow closely behind. Unsatisfactory pay? It ranks sixth.

What diverse talent is telling us is clear: they’ll leave a higher salary for a workplace where they actually belong.

Why Diverse Talent Leaves: The Real Reasons

Beyond toxic culture, the data reveals three critical factors driving diverse employees away:

Lack of Recognition and Appreciation Research shows that 79% of employees who leave their jobs cite lack of appreciation as a reason. For diverse employees who may already feel like they need to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously, invisibility is intolerable. When your contributions go unnoticed or unacknowledged, why stay?

Absence of Career Development Opportunities This is the retention killer that too many organizations ignore. Studies consistently show that 63% of people who left jobs cited a lack of advancement opportunities. Another report found that 40% of departing employees cited lack of future career development as a key dissatisfying factor.

Here’s what makes this particularly problematic for diverse talent: many organizations hire diverse employees into roles with little thought about their long-term trajectory. They check the diversity box but fail to create pathways for advancement. The result? High performers watch less qualified colleagues get promoted while they remain stuck—and then they leave.

Cultural Isolation and Lack of Belonging Even when the work environment isn’t overtly toxic, the absence of genuine belonging drives people away. When you’re the only one who looks like you in meetings, when your perspective is consistently dismissed, when you don’t see people who share your identity in leadership positions—the message is clear: there’s no future for you here.

A Unique Challenge—and Opportunity

For businesses, this retention challenge is existential. Businesses can’t afford to be a revolving door for diverse talent. Every person who relocates and then leaves represents not just a failed hire, but lost economic potential. A remote worker making $100,000 annually brings $83,000 in new economic output each year. When they leave, that economic benefit walks out the door with them.

But here’s the opportunity in states like Maine: a smaller, more connected business community means they can move faster than larger markets. They can build reputations as employers who don’t just hire diverse talent—they develop them, promote them, and create cultures where they thrive.

Moving Beyond Onboarding: Practical Retention Strategies

If you’re serious about retention—and in today’s tight labor market, you have to be—here are strategies that actually work:

1. Create Transparent Career Pathways Don’t wait for employees to ask about advancement. Proactively map out what growth looks like in your organization. Show them multiple paths—not everyone wants to be a manager. Some want deeper expertise, others want cross-functional experience, still others want to move laterally into different roles.

Make promotion criteria crystal clear. Document specific competencies, experiences, and performance metrics required for each level. Publish anonymized promotion statistics to demonstrate fairness. When advancement feels mysterious or politically motivated, people disengage.

2. Invest in Continuous Development Nearly all employees—about 94%—would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and growth. This doesn’t require massive budgets. Consider:

• Allocating specific time during workdays for professional development
• Providing access to online learning platforms
• Supporting relevant certifications and credentials
• Creating mentorship and sponsorship programs
• Offering stretch assignments and cross-departmental projects

The key is making development a consistent priority, not a performance review checkbox.

3. Build Recognition into Your Culture Recognition can’t be an annual award ceremony. It needs to be frequent, specific, and equitable. Implement peer-to-peer recognition systems that make appreciation visible across the organization. Tie recognition to your company values so people understand what behaviors matter.

Most importantly, ensure managers are trained to recognize contributions fairly. Unconscious bias often means that diverse employees’ work goes unnoticed while similar contributions from majority employees get praised.

4. Measure What Matters You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Track retention rates by demographics, department, and manager. Conduct stay interviews—not just exit interviews—to understand what’s keeping people engaged and what might drive them away.

Use inclusion assessments to get honest feedback about employee experience. Then—and this is critical—actually act on what you learn.

5. Equip Managers to Support Diverse Teams Research reveals that 57% of workers have quit at least one job because of a manager. Yet 66% of managers have not had any formal management training. We’re setting people up to fail.

Invest in manager development focused on inclusive leadership, difficult conversations, and career development coaching. Teach managers to have proactive career conversations rather than waiting for employees to ask. Help them recognize and interrupt bias in their decision-making.

6. Foster Community Through Employee Resource Groups ERGs provide crucial support networks, especially for employees from underrepresented groups. But they can’t just be social clubs—they need organizational support, budget, and most importantly, leadership attention. When ERG recommendations are heard and acted upon, you demonstrate that diverse voices shape organizational decisions.

The Bottom Line: Retention is Inclusion in Action

You can have the most sophisticated diversity recruiting strategy in the world. You can use tools like CliftonStrengths to reduce bias and build belonging from day one. But if people don’t see a future for themselves in your organization, they will leave.

Retention isn’t HR’s problem to solve—it’s a leadership imperative. It requires honest self-assessment about your culture, intentional investment in development, and sustained commitment to creating pathways for advancement.

For businesses to meet future workforce needs, they need to become a place where diverse talent doesn’t just arrive—they stay, they grow, and they build careers. That starts with recognizing that the hard work isn’t getting people in the door. It’s creating an organization worth staying for.

The question every leader should ask: Would your diverse employees enthusiastically recommend your company to others like them? If the answer is anything less than yes, you have retention work to do.