The talent-retention challenge for business services firms
High turnover isn’t just a headache for business services firms; it’s a direct threat to client relationships and continuity, revenue, and competitiveness.
Although the average U.S. voluntary turnover rate has been declining in recent years—down to 13% in 2025 from 17% in 2023—professional and business services firms face above-average quit rates due to the heavy demands of client-facing roles.
They also have more difficulty filling roles due to the need for specialized expertise and a shortage of talent. In December 2025, the professional and business services sector reported nearly 1.3 million job openings.
Of course, services-based organizations feel the pain of departures acutely. The loss of employees means a loss of institutional knowledge, a disruption of client relationships, and often a degradation of service quality, client satisfaction, and revenue. At the same time, high turnover puts more pressure on remaining teams, which can lead to more burnout and additional departures.
Interrupting the vicious cycle of attrition isn’t as simple as raising salaries. Recent research shows that flexibility, mental well‑being, sustainable workloads, and values‑aligned cultures now play a decisive role in whether skilled professionals stay or leave. In fact, the desire for work-life balance now outweighs salary for many employees.
Retention is more than a routine HR challenge; it’s a strategic business imperative. Services organizations must adapt their employee experience or risk continued talent loss.
Why high performers are the first to leave
Unfortunately, high-performing employees are often the first to depart. Energized by fast-paced work and meeting client demands, they can push themselves to the point of exhaustion and burnout.
High performers are the most likely to be absorbing client escalations, filling gaps when teams are understaffed, and taking on the most challenging assignments. They’re also more likely to feel constrained by a 40-hour workweek and to log extra hours to tackle their to-do lists. And because they’re reliable, high performers are the most likely to be assigned additional work.
When work becomes unsustainable, high performers are the best positioned to find a new opportunity elsewhere. And when high performers exit, the impact is often outsized: team morale dips, client trust waivers, and replacement costs climb. Gallup estimates that replacing a high performer costs 1.5 to 2 times their annual salary.
High performers want resources to help them with stress
According to Thaddeus Rada-Bayne, Culture Amp’s lead people scientist, the company’s survey of 200,000+ employees showed that the highest-performing employees care the most about whether their employer has the resources to help them with stress, likely because they’re more susceptible to burnout. The survey also revealed that high performers’ “willingness to commit to an organization is uniquely impacted by the stress-related support and resources they receive.
”Indeed, burnout isn’t simply a reflection of an individual’s work style or lack of boundaries but more a failure in the work environment. In business services, that environment is high emotional labor in client-facing roles, constant context switching across accounts, and expectations for always‑on communications. To deal effectively with these challenges, high performers in services organizations want support that helps them sustain high-level work and avoid burnout.
Why traditional approaches to wellness support often fall short
That support isn’t always an employee assistance program (EAP). Although EAPs are a critical mental health resource, their heavy reliance on scheduled counseling sessions doesn’t align well with the unpredictable hours, travel demands, and real‑time stressors of consultants with client-facing work.
Instead, high performers in business services firms need resources they can tap in moments of stress—resources to help them find relief, reset, and build resilience between demands. Short, practical mental health and wellness programs offered in a variety of formats are better suited to their hectic schedules.
At the same time, improving workforce well-being starts with the fundamentals: manageable client loads, adequate staffing, and flexibility that gives employees control over how they work. Organizations that combine a healthy workplace culture with practical, personalized, in-the-moment support can begin to fix the conditions that create burnout and give employees resources that help them stay grounded along the way.
How organizations are creating healthier workplaces
According to a Harvard Business Review survey, forward-looking organizations are taking a three-pronged approach to employee mental health that combines the following strategies:
- Taking a proactive and preventive approach to combating employee stress by providing access to mental health apps that help employees relieve stress and anxiety and get better sleep—the goal is to help employees in the moment but also prevent stress from escalating into more serious concerns
- Training managers to be more mindful; i.e., to regulate their emotions and to lead with empathy, which is critical to creating a workplace where employees believe their mental health is a priority
- Embedding mental health breaks into the workday by giving employees permission to pause and engage in self-care activity that helps them relax, rebalance, and de-stress
By integrating mental health into everyday workplace culture, these organizations may be able to help employees relieve stress before it escalates into more serious conditions, including burnout. Taking a more proactive, everyday approach to workforce mental health and well-being also can help reduce stigma and support employees in identifying and addressing their mental health needs sooner. Finally, making mental health a priority helps build employee trust and fuels higher engagement, productivity, creativity, and long‑term retention.
Mental health benefits as a competitive advantage in hiring and retention
Indeed, 92% of workers say it’s important to work for an organization that values their psychological and emotional well-being and provides support for mental health. On the flip side, nearly 60% of workers who said they’re unsatisfied with the mental health and well-being support offered by their employer are actively searching for a new job.
It’s clear that an organization’s commitment to employee mental health is fundamental not just to talent retention but also to successful hiring. In fact, recent workforce research shows that 60% of employees would accept lower salaries in exchange for greater flexibility and work-life balance, for example.
Workplace mental health policies, programs, and benefits can go a long way in demonstrating to employees and candidates alike that their well-being is a top priority, which is especially important in sectors that carry high burnout risk. According to SHRM, organizations that fail to evolve their mental health benefits strategies could ultimately see both high employee attrition and poor candidate attraction.
Turning retention challenges into a strategic opportunity
Retention challenges are difficult for services‑based organizations, but they also present an opportunity to differentiate. Firms that embed proactive, preventive mental health support into their culture can interrupt the cycle of burnout and attrition while promoting engagement and sustainable high performance, even in demanding client‑facing roles.
This shift requires pairing healthy work design with accessible, evidence‑based support. High performers need manageable client loads, flexibility, and leadership behaviors that reinforce psychological safety. They also need practical mental health resources they can easily access to manage stress, build resilience, and stay grounded. Calm Health fits naturally into this broader strategy by offering evidence-based programs that integrate easily into hectic schedules and help organizations reduce burnout risk across the workforce.
Integrating everyday mental health into workplace culture protects people, performance, and client relationships and outcomes. The employers who retain and attract top talent will be those who design environments where employees can take on big responsibilities without compromising their well‑being. For services firms, now is the time to lead with intention and make mental health a true strategic priority.
