The biggest retention lever is free, and most employers aren't pulling it
10th of June, 2026
What makes early careers talent feel their development genuinely matters? The answer is simpler than you might think. It’s not ping-pong tables or a glossy values page on the website. According to LHH's research with 1,409 early careers professionals, the single strongest signal is a clear progression or career pathway, named by nearly a third (32%). Another 19% point to regular, meaningful career conversations with their manager.
Here is the catch. Those conversations are often not happening. 44% of young employees are waiting to talk to their manager about their career, and a further 10% do not feel able to ask at all.
Meanwhile, 28% say their employer has given them no career development support in the past year.
What makes this such a missed opportunity is that the ambition is already there. In LHH's report, The Next Generation of Talent of more than 1,000 young people, 79% said they already know what they want to do for work. Clarity is not the problem. Confidence is. A good career conversation is one of the most direct ways to turn that clarity into confidence.
So how do you build a culture where those conversations actually happen? In our experience, three things make the difference.
1. Start with the manager, not the graduate. Line managers shape whether early talent stays or quietly drifts, yet many have never been shown how to coach rather than simply manage. We work with organisations to help leaders embrace talent mobility and hold genuine, future-focused career conversations, the kind that connect a young person's aspirations to real opportunities in the business.
2. Give people ownership, and the tools to use it. Confidence grows when young people can name their strengths, tell their story and see a route forward. LHH's early careers programmes blend practical workshops, on-demand digital resources and one-to-one coaching with accredited career experts, so graduates learn to drive their own careers rather than wait to be developed.
3. Make it a journey, not an event. The strongest results come from support sequenced across time, not delivered in a single induction-week burst. A structured journey through the first couple of years gives people space to reflect, practise and apply what they learn on the job.
Done well, this shifts the dial for graduates and managers alike. If the ambition is already in your early talent but the conversations are not yet happening, that is exactly where we can help. Find out more about our early careers support.