7 Ways Employment Hero Can Help You Retain Top Talent

Retaining top talent in 2026 is about more than providing a positive workplace culture; employees are looking for jobs where they feel genuinely seen, heard, and invested in. They want growth opportunities, but also to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Offering all this isn’t always easy, but the cost of not offering it could be detrimental to your business.

The Work Institute suggests that the cost of an employee’s turnover to a business is about 33% of their annual salary. Along with productivity costs, time spent to fill the role and training periods for the new employee, it all adds up – and fast.

Luckily Employment Hero’s HR and Payroll solutions can help you build a culture that your best people never want to leave.

Recognise your team

Employee recognition may seem like a basic, but it’s overlooked all too often in the busy day-to-day of running a business. When employees feel their hard work is invisible, they start looking for the exit.

Employment Hero makes this easy, offering a range of recognition, shout-out and even anniversary and birthday options. These can be linked to company values, or automated with time-based triggers and can be awarded by leadership as well as colleagues.The live Company Feed on the dashboard displays them in real time, ensuring no win goes unnoticed.

The power of employee benefits and perks

In an era of rising living costs, your compensation strategy needs to go beyond the base salary.

The Perks tab in the EH Work App allows your employees to gain access to thousands of discounts on daily essentials from groceries and fuel to gym memberships and insurance. You can even award Hero Points for exceptional performance, giving your team tangible rewards they can spend on things they actually want. It’s a powerful way to help your team’s income stretch further without stretching your payroll budget.

Develop your people

Keeping your team engaged is one of the most effective ways to retain top talent. You need to actively invest in their learning and development, as well as offer opportunities for growth.

The Learning Management System (LMS), provided in partnership with Go1, allows you to assign courses to employees to ensure onboarding and compliance training goes smoothly and can be tracked. Beyond that, employees can use the LMS to upskill in areas such as leadership and AI literacy, ensuring they stay engaged and are empowered to future-proof their skillset.

Once an employee is ready to advance their career, they can head to the Career tab in the EH Work App to view and apply for internal jobs, allowing them to find their next role within your company and retaining their institutional knowledge and talent.

Support your team with an employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Burnout and stress are the silent killers of retention. An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provides a vital safety net, offering your team 24/7 access to confidential, professional counselling.

“After just one session I felt a huge weight off my shoulders,” said Anna, an EAP user working in a mid size tech company. “Not only did my counsellor support me through a dark period, but she also gave me coping strategies that I still use today. My employer may never know just how grateful I am for our EAP, but the sessions I had with my counsellor were literally life-changing. I hope I don’t need to use it again, but it’s a huge comfort to know it’s there if I do.”

By providing support when they need it most, you can show your workforce that you care about them as people.

Get serious about goal setting

Many top performers are inherently driven and crave alignment on overarching goals and strategies. By not providing this, they can become disengaged and frustrated.

Employment Hero uses the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework which focuses on transparent and connected company, team, and employee goals. When using OKRs effectively as a team, all your employees understand how they contribute to and can achieve the wider organisation goal.

Improve communication with one on ones (1:1s)

If managers and their direct reports only communicate when something goes wrong, employees can feel unsupported and unheard.

By scheduling recurring one on ones (1:1s) within the Employment Hero platform, managers can dedicate time to their direct reports’ development, workload management and wellbeing. The feature includes pre-set talking points and questions, as well as note-taking and commenting, allowing everyone to keep a record of what’s been discussed, take away action items, and revisit previous topics.

The power of employee happiness surveys

Employee happiness is one of the most important factors when it comes to retaining staff. Happy, engaged employees will always be easier to retain, than those who are disengaged and coasting through their role.

The Employee Happiness Survey feature allows you to capture anonymous, real-time feedback. Through a simple 1–10 scale and open comments, you get an honest snapshot of company morale. The feature even allows leadership to respond to anonymous feedback, opening a safe dialogue to resolve issues before they escalate.

Your retention strategy with Employment Hero starts now.

To reduce turnover and retain your star employees, you want to enhance their work experience. You want to make them feel valued and appreciated because if they’re feeling satisfied within their roles, they’re less likely to seek fulfilment elsewhere.

Our team of HR and business specialists are ready to show you how you can retain top talent with Employment Hero. They can walk you through a demo and show you exactly how to get the most value out of our software. Get in touch today so you can retain your employees tomorrow.