Why your retention data is lying to you

The numbers tell you when women leave. They don't tell you why — or when the real decision was made.

Most organisations have retention data. Turnover rates, average tenure, exit interview themes. They track when people leave, what they said on the way out, and sometimes how long it takes to replace them.

What they rarely have is insight into the real story — the one that formed long before someone handed in their notice.

I've been a CBT psychotherapist for 17 years. In that time, I've had thousands of conversations with women about their working lives. And what strikes me, consistently, is how long the decision to leave has been forming before it's ever acted on. Not days. Not weeks. Sometimes years.

Why exit interviews miss the point

Exit interviews are conducted at the point of departure — when someone has already made peace with leaving, has accepted a job elsewhere, and has no incentive to be fully honest. What they say is the sanitised version. The professional account. Not the thing that actually caused the decision.

The real reasons — the eroded trust, the invisible ceiling, the return from maternity leave that felt like being reset to zero, the manager who never learned to hold a human conversation — those are not in your exit data.

What you're actually losing

Retention statistics measure departure. They don't measure disengagement — the withdrawal of effort, creativity, and commitment that happens long before someone leaves. And disengagement is expensive. A woman who has checked out but not yet resigned is still drawing a salary, still interacting with clients, still influencing team culture — just with significantly less of herself than she had to give.

By the time the departure shows up in your data, it has already cost you a great deal.

What a different approach looks like

Understanding why women really disengage — and what can be done about it — requires access to conversations that your usual data infrastructure cannot reach. Genuinely confidential, genuinely independent conversations, with someone who knows what to listen for.

That's what the Women at Work Listening Project is designed to do.

If you'd like to understand what's actually happening for women inside your organisation, visit nataliemccandless.com/working-with-me-organisations