How to Reduce Employee Turnover
7 Proven Steps for GTA and Durham Region Organizations | 2026
If you are trying to reduce employee turnover at your company, you are already asking the right question. Every resignation costs you knowledge, time, and money. After 35 years inside Fortune 100 and manufacturing organizations, I can tell you that the root cause of high employee turnover is almost always the same, and so is the fix.
Why Does Employee Turnover Happen in the First Place?
Understanding why employee turnover happens is the first step toward reducing it. Pay matters, but it is rarely the primary reason your best people leave. According to research published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), leadership quality and workplace culture consistently rank above compensation as the top drivers of voluntary turnover. This matches exactly what I see in organizations across Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Area every year.
The most common root causes of employee turnover I find are these:
- Leaders who are technically strong but were never taught how to lead people effectively
- No clear, written goals at every level, leaving employees feeling directionless
- Poor communication and weak delegation, leaving people either micromanaged or ignored
- No visible path for growth, so ambitious employees look elsewhere to advance
- A reactive, firefighting culture where everyone is busy but few feel productive or valued
Every one of these is a leadership gap, not an employee problem. That distinction matters, because leadership gaps can be closed with the right training and skills development.
7 Proven Steps to Reduce Employee Turnover at Your Company
Here are the seven steps I use with organizations across Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, and the broader GTA to measurably reduce employee turnover and build lasting retention.
- Assess your leaders first, not your employees. Most employee turnover starts with a leadership gap. Identify where your managers are struggling before spending on recruitment or perks.
- Set clear, written goals at every level. Employee turnover spikes when people feel directionless. A structured goal-setting process, applied consistently, closes that gap quickly.
- Build delegation skills across your management team. Overloaded, under-delegating leaders burn out their teams. When managers learn to delegate with accountability, workloads balance and turnover drops.
- Create consistent two-way communication habits. Employees who feel unheard resign. Structured check-ins and feedback loops are among the lowest-cost, highest-impact ways to reduce employee turnover.
- Make growth paths visible and specific. High performers leave when they cannot see a future at your company. Show them what advancement looks like and exactly how to get there.
- Shift culture from reactive to results-driven. A constant-firefighting culture is exhausting for everyone. Leadership Management International programs help organizations build a proactive, results-oriented culture that retains people long-term.
- Measure employee turnover as a business KPI. What gets measured gets managed. Set a specific target to reduce employee turnover over the next 12 months and review it monthly alongside your other business metrics.
How to Retain Top Talent in Ontario
Retaining top talent in Ontario comes down to giving your best people a reason to stay and grow. High performers want to be challenged, to see measurable progress, and to be led by someone they respect. When you invest in developing your leaders, you signal to your strongest people that this is an organization worth building a career in, and employee turnover among your top performers drops significantly.
My training and skills development work, delivered through Leadership Management International programs, focuses on the specific behaviours that reduce employee turnover: effective goal setting, goal-directed time management, genuine team building, and clear two-way communication. These are not soft ideas. They are practical, measurable skills.
What the Research Says — and Where Other Programs Fall Short
The evidence on what drives employee turnover is consistent across major research organizations. Dale Carnegie's own global research found that only 38% of employees surveyed had confidence in their immediate manager, directly linking poor manager development to high employee turnover and disengagement. That same research identifies the relationship with the immediate manager as the number one organizational driver of employee engagement.
Similarly, FranklinCovey's research on employee turnover confirms that over half of employees are open to leaving their current jobs at any given time, but that most voluntary turnover is preventable when organizations invest proactively in leadership development at every level.
Both organizations are right about the problem. Where the difference lies is in the solution they offer. Large national training programs are built for scale. They serve hundreds of companies at once with standardized curricula delivered in workshops or online modules. That works when you need broad, consistent content delivered across a large organization with dedicated L&D infrastructure.
Most small and mid-sized organizations in Durham Region and the GTA do not have that. What they need is direct, customized involvement with their specific people, their specific goals, and their specific culture, tracked against measurable outcomes. That is what a proven program from Leadership Management International, customized to your organization, is built to deliver.
Warning Signs That Employee Turnover Is About to Get Worse
Employee turnover rarely comes out of nowhere. Watch for these early signals before your best people hand in their notice:
- People working long hours but output is flat or falling
- Rising errors, quality issues, or consistently missed deadlines
- Withdrawal, cynicism, or a visible drop in engagement during meetings
- Your strongest contributors quietly carrying the team because delegation is weak
- Repeated conversations about pay when the real issue is leadership and culture
When leaders develop stronger prioritization, effective delegation, and consistent communication habits, the pressure on the whole team eases and the risk of employee turnover falls with it.
How to Build a Culture That Naturally Reduces Employee Turnover
Culture is not a poster on the wall. It is the sum of how your leaders behave every day, especially under pressure. If you want to reduce employee turnover through a stronger culture, you build it by developing the people who set the tone.
Through a proven program from Leadership Management International, customized to your organization, I work directly with your team over several weeks of spaced working sessions. We apply the program to real situations, drive measurable behavioural change, and track results. Culture does not shift from a single workshop. It shifts when behaviour shifts, and behaviour shifts when your leaders are finally equipped and accountable.
What Results Can You Expect When You Reduce Employee Turnover Through Leadership Development?
When you invest in developing your leaders the right way, reducing employee turnover is one of several outcomes. Organizations I work with across Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Pickering, Barrie, and Mississauga consistently see:
- Measurably lower employee turnover and stronger retention of top performers
- A results-oriented, accountable workplace culture that people want to stay in
- Stronger delegation, clearer communication, and better team alignment
- Improved productivity and reduced waste in key workflows
- Return on investment of typically 10:1 or better, tracked and reported
Ready to Reduce Employee Turnover at Your Company?
Request a free no-obligation meeting with Malcolm Gurley. In a 15-minute phone call, we will look at your specific situation, identify the biggest leadership gaps driving your turnover, and outline what a program could look like for your organization.
Call 416.669.7644 | Mon - Fri: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Arrange a Free 15-min CallFrequently Asked Questions About Reducing Employee Turnover
How do I reduce employee turnover at my company?
The most effective way to reduce employee turnover is to develop the people-leadership skills of your managers. Most turnover stems from weak leadership, unclear goals, and a culture that does not value people. A proven program from Leadership Management International, customized to your organization, addresses all three with measurable results.
How do I retain top talent in Ontario?
Give your best people strong leadership, clear goals, and a visible path to grow. Investing in leadership training and skills development shows high performers that your organization is worth a long-term commitment, which is the single most important factor in reducing employee turnover among your top contributors.
What is the ROI of leadership development programs?
Leadership development programs that are properly implemented and tracked deliver significant returns. Gallup research shows that replacing a single employee costs between one-half and two times their annual salary in recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity costs alone. Programs that measurably reduce employee turnover typically deliver a return on investment of 10:1 or better when that avoided replacement cost is factored in alongside productivity gains.
How long does it take to see results from leadership development?
Results begin showing during the program itself. The spaced working session format means new behaviours are applied to real situations in real time, not just discussed in a classroom. Most clients notice measurable shifts in communication, delegation, and engagement within the first few sessions, with the full impact on employee turnover building over the following months.
Do you work with companies in Durham Region?
Yes. Gurley Leadership Solutions is based in Ajax and works directly with organizations to reduce employee turnover across the Greater Toronto Area and Durham Region, including Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Pickering, Barrie, Mississauga, and Kitchener, across manufacturing, healthcare, not-for-profit, engineering, and operations sectors.
About the Author: Malcolm Gurley
Malcolm Gurley is President of Gurley Leadership Solutions Inc., based in Ajax, Ontario. With more than 35 years of senior executive experience at Fortune 100 and manufacturing organizations including Honeywell, Johnson Controls, and Armstrong Fluid Technology, he helps organizations across the Greater Toronto Area and Durham Region measurably reduce employee turnover and raise leadership effectiveness. He is LMI Canada licensed, Lean Certified, and a Six Sigma Black Belt, delivering proven Leadership Management International programs customized to each organization, with a return on investment of typically 10:1 or better.
