Belonging at work isn’t a perk; it’s performance infrastructure. It’s what makes people stay, stretch and create. Yet retention remains a pressing problem: in 2024, 51 per cent of HR managers named it their biggest challenge (Ciphr).
Outside HR, the reasons why people leave their jobs is often misdiagnosed. When McKinsey examined record-high rates of quitting worldwide, many managers pointed to pay or hours. Employees pointed to something more fundamental – a lack of community at work.
If we want new and younger starters to stick, belonging has to sit alongside salaries and benefits. HR needs the organisation behind it to prioritise belonging with the same seriousness.
Early choices and inflexibility
In the UK, career-shaping choices start early and narrow quickly. Many young people report generic careers advice and an over-emphasis on university routes, which leaves vocational and apprenticeship pathways under-explored. Official labour statistics indicate workers aged 18–24 are about twice as likely to change jobs in a given year as those over 45.
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My organisation, the Belonging Forum, conducted a nationally representative study of 10,000 people. It found that, while 29% of UK adults feel lonely at least some of the time, that figure is markedly higher for students and people out of work. That means many early-career hires step into their first job already struggling for connection.
It’s no surprise that recent early-careers surveys show roughly half of graduates expect to change careers within five years. This restlessness is a signal, not a flaw: we’re failing to match people with places of work where they can put down roots, grow skills and contribute creatively.
Systematic reductions in early career exploration
Apprenticeships have long afforded a supportive pathway to establishing a career, working alongside relevant departments and supported closely by HR to increase confidence, competency, and create a sense of belonging. They also create loyalty to the apprenticeship provider in the early days of a young person’s career. Apprenticeships form a backbone to finding talent and supporting staff retention.
Youth uncertainty around career paths can be tied to a decline in apprenticeship opportunities, which have fallen by around a third since 2016/17 despite the levy intended to spur investment in training. And while new national initiatives, such as Skills England, aim to boost technical capability for a changing economy, we must value human skills with equal seriousness – listening, collaboration, mentoring, ethical judgement – because they are the connective tissue of belonging.
None of this is an argument against performance. Belonging is performance infrastructure. When people feel safe to learn, supported to grow and able to shape their path, retention rises and creativity follows. Research has linked stronger workplace belonging to meaningful gains in performance and substantial reductions in turnover risk – a huge consideration when businesses are replacing ever-apparent skills gaps. When people don’t belong, churn does.
What HR leaders can do now
So, what should HR leaders do now? Start by measuring what you treasure. Treat belonging with the same seriousness as costs or utilisation: run a light quarterly pulse on whether people feel they matter and can grow; track early-career internal mobility; map cross-team ties; and make the cadence and quality of manager 1:1s visible. What you measure signals what you value and reveals where you can act.
Design the first 90 days for exploration rather than attrition. Replace “sink or swim” with structured discovery – short rotations or project sprints, job shadowing, a clearly signposted first win – so new joiners can test fit before they specialise. You’ll reduce costly false starts and help people put down roots faster.
Lift manager capability from task oversight to relational leadership. Equip managers to notice strengths, invite voice and respond early to struggle; recognise and reward those who grow others, not only those who hit targets. These behaviours are as teachable as budgeting or sprint planning.
Make hybrid feel human. Plan rhythms that create presence, not just attendance; weekly check-ins, protected learning windows, purposeful on-site days, so no one becomes invisible. Onboarding should unfold over weeks, not hours, with mapped introductions, shadowing and checkpoints.
Finally, make purpose unmistakable. Build line-of-sight from daily tasks to customers and communities served. A simple quarterly habit – each team sharing one story of who was better off because of the work – turns meaning into a practice, not a poster.
A people-first, long-term approach to skills gap bridging
Across all of this, use a whole-person lens. At the Belonging Forum we talk about people, place, power and purpose – not as a checklist, but a way to design work that supports and empowers. Do your early-career programmes invest in relationships (people)? Do your rhythms and spaces make connection likely (place)? Do new joiners have agency in shaping their path (power)? Can they see how their work matters beyond the task (purpose)?
Of course, employers can’t fix everything upstream. Partnerships with colleges, training providers and community organisations still matter, especially for widening access and diversifying pipelines. But HR doesn’t need to wait for a new policy to make a difference. Most of the levers sit with you: how you measure, how you manage, how you onboard, and how you make meaning visible.
Back to those new starters. They won’t stay because someone tells them to. They’ll stay because people invested in their growth, the place gave room to learn, they had real power in shaping their path, and their purpose was visible in the work. That’s what belonging looks like in the workplace – and it’s within every employer’s reach.
Kim Samuel is the founder of the Belonging Forum and Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness, global “think-and-do” organisations partnering across sectors to combat social isolation and build belonging. She is the author of On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation (Abrams, 2022). An educator, she is a Research Fellow at OPHI, a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and guest lectures at Oxford, Harvard, and LSE.
