How to retain your high potential employees

Building an agile workforce is about more than shifting skills and adapting to change. True agility depends on the people who drive it, and that means keeping your best talent engaged and growing.

If you want your organization to stay ahead, it is not enough to simply follow trends. You need a workforce that is engaged, flexible, and ready for whatever comes next. Agility gives you the ability to adjust when priorities shift, respond to unexpected challenges, and keep moving forward with confidence.

And here is the important part, agility is about adapting and also about retaining your best people. When high potential employees are supported and given opportunities to grow into leadership roles, they are much more likely to stay. Equipping them with the skills they need today while preparing them for the business needs of tomorrow makes it easier for them to see a future with your organization. Without that support, they may begin looking for opportunities elsewhere.

In this article, we will explore practical ways to retain top talent by making learning, career growth, and workforce insights more agile. The goal is simple. Help your people picture their future with you and feel ready to step into new opportunities when the business needs them most.

Who are your high potential employees

High potential employees are not always your top performers today, but they are the people who have the capacity to grow quickly and take on greater responsibilities tomorrow. They often stand out because they:

• Learn and adapt quickly – They thrive in changing environments and pick up new skills faster than peers

• Show strong leadership traits – Even without a formal title, they influence others, take initiative, and bring people together around solutions.

• Have ambition and drive – They want to grow, seek out challenges, and push themselves beyond what their current role demands.

• Demonstrate resilience – When setbacks happen, they recover quickly, stay focused, and keep moving forward.

• Think strategically – They see the bigger picture, connect their work to organizational goals, and anticipate what will be needed in the future.

The cost of losing talent

When a high potential employee leaves, the loss goes far beyond just filling a vacancy. The impact ripples across the organization in ways that are often underestimated.

• Knowledge walks out the door
  Your best people do not just bring skills. They carry years of customer insights, business know-how, and deep expertise. When they go, that experience can take years to rebuild and sometimes it is never fully recovered.

• Recruitment costs climb
  Hiring from the outside is expensive and time consuming. There are recruitment fees, onboarding, and the long ramp-up period before someone is fully productive. In the meantime, deadlines slip, and pressure builds on the team that remains.

• Pipelines dry up
  High potential employees represent the future. They are the people who could step into critical leadership roles down the line. When they leave, you not only lose today’s performance but also tomorrow’s succession plan.

• Morale takes a hit
  When respected colleagues walk away, others notice. Even employees who were once happy may start to wonder about their own future and whether they should be looking too.

Retention, then, is about much more than keeping people happy in the short term. It safeguards business continuity, builds stronger leadership pipelines, and helps ensure your organization is ready for whatever comes next.

What is holding organizations back

If keeping top talent is so important, why is it so hard? Often, it comes down to a few common challenges.

• Unclear career paths
  People want to see where they are headed. When growth opportunities feel vague or out of reach, employees may begin scanning the horizon for roles elsewhere. Research backs this up: 68% of workers say they would stay if their employer invested in upskilling them, and 65% would stay with reskilling opportunities (SHRM, 2022). Without a visible path forward, even your strongest performers may drift away.

• Reskilling that cannot keep pace
  Roles and required skills are changing faster than ever. If employees cannot build the capabilities they need for the future, they risk feeling stuck. That frustration often drives them to look for companies that provide faster, more relevant development. For organizations, this means widening skill gaps and slower readiness when change inevitably arrives.

• No clear proof of impact
  Learning and development investments are crucial, but if progress is hard to measure, budgets get questioned. Disconnected systems make it difficult to track results, and without clear evidence, programs are at risk of being scaled back. When development slows, retention often follows because employees see fewer reasons to stay and grow with the company.

How Cornerstone Learn + Elevate helps you retain top talent

Retention works best when employees can imagine a future with your organization and feel genuinely supported in reaching it. That is exactly where Cornerstone Learn + Elevate comes in, helping you address the challenges that make high potential employees think about leaving.

• AI powered personalized learning
  Imagine being able to give every employee exactly the right skills at exactly the right time. That is what happens when performance data connects with career goals. Cornerstone Learn + Elevate identifies skill gaps and recommends personalized learning paths, helping employees upskill faster and feel ready for new opportunities.

• Clear career paths and internal mobility
  When employees can see where they are headed and how to get there, they are far more likely to stay. Cornerstone Learn + Elevate guides them toward aspirational roles through learning, mentorship, and projects, while giving managers the tools to support career conversations. Organizations using these tools have seen an 82% increase in internal promotions, strengthening both retention and the leadership pipeline.

• A unified talent ecosystem
  Disconnected systems make it difficult to show results. Cornerstone Learn + Elevate brings learning, performance, and career mobility into one connected platform. That means simpler processes, consolidated insights, and a clearer view of the workforce.

Vitaco’s Leeza Law puts it this way: “Linking learning and performance gives our employees the option to improve and work through the next steps. Employees are automatically prompted to complete their development planning during reviews and understand what they want to do next in their careers.”

For organizations, the benefits are tangible: $1.9 million in savings, faster and smarter talent decisions, and a workforce that is prepared for whatever comes next.

DHL’s story: keeping talent ready and engaged

Deutsche Post DHL Group understands that agility is essential. With more than half a million employees worldwide, they wanted a way to engage and retain talent while preparing for the future.

With Cornerstone Learn + Elevate, DHL was able to:

1. Spot skill gaps in real time

1. Deliver personalized development at scale

1. Guide employees toward career paths that match their aspirations

The result was a workforce that could move into new roles quickly, stay competitive in a fast moving industry, and grow with the business.

As DHL’s CLO explains: “With Cornerstone, we can track learning and performance in real time, which helps us focus on coaching and development.”

That kind of visibility gives employees confidence in their growth and a reason to stay invested.

And they are not the only ones.

1. Hyatt gained visibility into their available talent, making it easier to place the right people in the right roles.

1. Canon boosted internal hiring by accessing real time resumes and career plans.

1. Kemin Industries implemented a more agile performance management approach that increased employee engagement by 20%.

Together, these stories show how investing in visibility, personalized development, and career pathways can help employees stay longer, grow faster, and contribute to lasting business success.

Retention and agility go hand in hand

At the end of the day, keeping your top talent is about more than just reducing turnover. It is about ensuring your workforce is ready to adapt when business needs change. Employees who see a future with you are more likely to stay, keep building new skills, and pivot when it matters most.

Retention supports workforce agility. And agility is what keeps your business ahead.

Your high potential talent is one of your most valuable assets. When they can see what is next, they have a reason to stay and grow with your organization.

Want to understand why retention challenges persist? Download our ebook The Hidden Talent Disconnect: You have done the work, so why is it not working? to uncover the barriers keeping employees from staying and thriving in your organization.