Your best people don’t leave because of their salary – they leave because of a lack of prospects

The team is running smoothly. Projects are being completed. And yet you sense that the people you rely on most are already thinking ahead - not about the next task, but about their next employer. This is no coincidence and no personal failure. It is the result of a structural gap: if you want to retain talent without showing them a clear future within your own organisation, you will lose them - sooner or later. This article explains why the usual responses to this problem don’t work and what does work instead.

The problem isn’t loyalty - it’s a lack of prospects

Many managers are looking for the problem in the wrong place. They increase salaries, offer flexibility, invest in benefits. All of this helps - but it doesn’t solve the actual problem. According to a recent analysis, the leading reasons for resigning are not insufficient pay - that only comes in sixth place. At the top of the list are a poor working environment (32.4%), poor management (30.3%) and dissatisfaction with the line manager (27.7%).

What lies behind this is often the same: people cannot see where they are supposed to be heading. A lack of growth opportunities is one of the main reasons why employees left their jobs in 2025. Anyone who cannot answer the question “Where will I be in three years’ time?” will look for that answer elsewhere.

If managers or organisations actively support their employees’ skills development, they are four times more likely to still be with the company a year later - if both do so, this figure rises ninefold. This is not a vague signal. It is a measurable mechanism.

Why succession planning doesn’t work in most companies

The reaction of many organisations: they engage in succession planning. They enter names into a matrix. They define “high potentials”. And then they realise that little has changed. The reason is structural, not operational.

Only 11% of companies pursue a comprehensive succession approach, whilst almost a third have no systematic safeguards in place at all. That is one problem. The other: According to the latest workplace barometer, just 31% of employees want to take on a leadership role at all - 53% even actively reject a career at management level.

The reasons for this are telling. Mental pressure, a lack of career prospects and simply no desire to take on responsibility are the most frequently cited reasons. So anyone wishing to build a next-generation leadership team must first understand why their best people might not find leadership roles attractive at all - and what that says about current conditions.

“Many companies only realise the importance of their key positions when managers resign or suddenly leave the company.”
- softgarden, Succession planning as part of HR development

The true cost of failing to develop successors

The cost of failing to develop the next generation is rarely immediately apparent - it is spread across many small losses. A project that stalls because only one person can really make decisions. A key role that remains vacant for six months. A manager who leaves the company, taking with them a body of knowledge that has not been documented.

Just under 13 million workers will retire by 2036 - almost a third of the current workforce. Without preparation, these departures catch organisations off guard and force them to react, which is more expensive than any targeted development programme.

On average, it costs 33% of a person’s annual salary to replace them. For management positions, this figure is significantly higher - added to this are the time needed for induction, loss of productivity within the team and the underestimated impact on remaining staff: those who see good people leaving without anything changing will draw their own conclusions.

And the Gallup Engagement Index Germany 2024 paints a sobering picture of the status quo: Only 16% of employees in Germany are satisfied with their current manager; almost one in eight employees has mentally checked out and is now merely going through the motions. This is not a question of motivation - it is a question of leadership structure.

What most have already tried - and why it isn’t enough

Mentoring programmes, development reviews, leadership training, 360-degree feedback. These measures are not wrong. But they come too late, are too abstract or too isolated to have a real impact. The underlying problem remains unaddressed: anyone who wants to develop needs more than just learning content - they need real responsibility, genuine scope for decision-making and the experience that their development is strategically relevant to the organisation.

The greatest leverage lies in internal talent development, coaching and succession planning. Those who systematically build these up gain more stability and speed in the long term than through short-term recruitment from the market.

The word ‘systematic’ is crucial. Not an annual development review that disappears into a file. Not a workshop that changes nothing about day-to-day work. But a structural decision: Which roles are critical to the organisation’s future? Who within the organisation has the potential to fill these roles? And what needs to change in the reality of the workplace so that these people can grow - not in theory, but through concrete tasks with real consequences?

Managers are responsible for 70% of the variance in team engagement - a factor that directly impacts retention and performance. This means: whoever develops the next generation of leaders is simultaneously creating the conditions under which today’s employees will stay.

What works instead: linking development to real work

The most effective framework is not a course, but the task itself. Potential leaders grow when they take responsibility for an outcome - not for a process, but for a measurable goal for which they are accountable. Stretch assignments, genuine project responsibility, early involvement in strategic decisions: these are not nice-to-haves, but the mechanism through which leadership competence is forged.

What is structurally missing here is a focus on the organisation itself. This is because talent often fails to develop - not because they are incapable of doing so, but because the work is organised in such a way that there is no room for growth. Tasks are tied to individuals rather than roles. Decisions are passed up the line. Outcomes get stuck because no one can or is allowed to take responsibility.

Development plans for potential candidates should not be tailored to specific positions - a rigid succession plan carries the risk that a selected individual may develop differently than anticipated. Those who take this into account do not build a shadow structure, but a genuine leadership pipeline that grows with the organisation.

The first concrete step

Before we get into programmes or measures, we need an honest assessment: where in your organisation are results getting stuck because too much depends on individual people? Which roles are strategically critical - and for which of these is there currently no internal succession? Where do in-house talents have potential that they cannot currently fulfil because the work is structured in such a way that there is no room for it?

These questions are not pleasant. But they are the only ones that lead to real answers. Because a next-generation leadership team is not created by a decision - it is created when the right people can grow through the right work. And that is a question of organisational structure, not people development.

If you want to see where capacity is currently tied up in your organisation, hindering talent from developing - and which changes will generate more results and more growth first - then that is exactly what we at Scaled Innovation will work out together in 10 working days.