Money doesn’t retain employees in the long-term: 6 key factors
Retain Hong Kong Talent: 6 key factors to retain your employees and grow your business and decrease your staff turnover
A successful healthy company can be recognized by its employee turnover rate. Too often overlooked, a high turnover provokes unhealthy patterns for your company affecting results. This brings issues internally between departments and causes difficulty in providing the right service and communication with your clients. On average in Mainland China, the turnover rate is over 30% making it harder to build a stable image both internally and externally.
60% of HK professionals consider leaving annually” (Source: JobsDB)
Companies facing a high turnover rate should reconsider their approach and understand that the human factor is key to their success. There are ways to improve conditions at work, approach and communication.”
Creating a positive environment in a firm will reflect directly on the results, image and well-being of your staff. Each company is different and is facing different challenges.
6 key factors to retain employees:
- Establish and communicate a clear long-term goal and vision with short-term goals
- Trust and empower your managers in their decisions
- Put the right person in the right place
- Provide the right training and evolution support – don’t forget the advantage of individual skills
- Establish a reward system to acknowledge the success and effort of your team
- Provide direct access to the top management
Achieving the above takes time, changes cannot be pushed too strongly and need to be encouraged by management. Empowering the team to be part of the change is crucial.
Why career growth beats salary in Hong Kong?
Professionals accepting moderate pay gains position for faster progression. Employers now value critical thinking (56%) over coding (51%) for leadership pipelines. Hong Kong’s high-cost, dynamic economy has reshaped employee priorities, with career development emerging as a more powerful motivator than immediate salary gains. This shift reflects deeper economic realities, evolving workforce values, and strategic responses to technological disruption.
They need to feel valued and recognised for their achievement. It is a two-way approach.
How to retain employees?
Corporate training
Hong Kong’s talent market has entered an era of strategic upskilling, where career growth delivers compounding returns: higher lifetime earnings, leadership mobility, and AI-era relevance. While salary remains table stakes, professionals are looking for companies that support their personal growth and encourage their goals. Companies aligning talent strategies with this paradigm will dominate the post-recovery economy. Corporate training turns the “great resignation” into a “great advancement.
Company culture
The culture is driven by the leaders and managers. The mission, values and vision are the 3 pillars boosting employees’ engagement. Training C-levels and managers to be emotionally intelligent leaders creates a snowball effect in building a healthy company culture.
How do managers make their team feel?
Interpersonal relationship: The primary retention lever
The critical link between interpersonal relationships and talent retention is increasingly defining competitive advantage in dynamic the labour markets like Hong Kong. As traditional retention tools (e.g., salary increases) show diminishing returns, organisations prioritising human connections and relational dynamics achieve significantly higher engagement and loyalty.
How to reach a relationship dynamic at work?
Ceicia supports and guides companies toward continuous improvement, incorporating people-centric management strategies. Helping corporations to understand their growth opportunities through their main assets: Their people.
Contact us for a first discovery call. Ceicia offers tailored programs to start your journey toward continuous improvement, retain your staff and see results.
Ceicia’s founder