How to Attract and Retain Talent with Learning and Development

Quick Answer

To attract and retain talent with learning and development, offer growth people can see on the way in and a path to use it once they arrive. Career reasons still top the list of why people quit, so pair courses and certifications with manager career conversations, visible promotion paths, and real work that puts new skills to use.

Why people leave, and why most of it is fixable

Work Institute's 2026 Retention Report, built on exit interviews from 2025, found that career was the top reason people left their jobs for the 15th year in a row. 19.2% of departing employees cited it, the highest share since 2021. Inside that category, exits tied to promotion are up 118% since 2022. People are not leaving because they stopped learning. They are leaving because what they learned had nowhere to go.

The same report classifies nearly three quarters of all reasons for leaving (74.69%) as preventable. Gallup's turnover research adds a detail every manager should sit with. More than half of departing employees (51%) said that in the three months before they left, no manager or leader talked with them about their job satisfaction or their future with the organization.

Those exits are expensive. Gallup estimates that replacing an employee costs one-half to two times that person's annual salary, and calls the estimate conservative. For a U.S. PMP holder at PMI's reported median salary of $135,000, that is roughly $67,500 to $270,000 for a single resignation.

Not every exit is a training problem. Work-life balance, health, relocation, and retirement are real reasons people leave, and no course fixes them. By our read, though, more than a third of 2025 exits (36.1%) fell into reasons a development program can influence, either directly through career growth or indirectly through better managers and credential-linked pay. That is where the L&D budget should go first.

Training attracts candidates, advancement keeps them

Development is a hiring magnet. In the American Upskilling Study from Gallup and Amazon, 65% of U.S. workers said the chance to join an upskilling program is an extremely or very important factor when deciding whether to take a new job. 48% said they were extremely or very likely to switch employers for one. That survey was fielded in 2021, and the appetite has held. In the TalentLMS 2026 L&D Benchmark Report, 73% of trained U.S. employees said stronger learning and development opportunities would make them stay longer, and the share who would leave over limited learning opportunities rose again to 35%.

Here is the catch, and the Gallup study flagged it itself. Upskilling may help attract workers, the authors wrote, though not necessarily retain them. Training raises skills and expectations at the same time. When the new skills have no place to land inside the company, the employee takes them somewhere they do. That is the promotion signal in the Work Institute data.

Employers know learning is the lever. LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that 88% of organizations are concerned about retention, and providing learning opportunities is their No. 1 retention strategy. Yet only 36% qualify as career development champions with robust programs in place. Many of the rest are offering courses without the career structure around them.

How to build a development program that attracts and retains

Put development in the job post and the offer. If two out of three candidates weigh upskilling when choosing a job, tell them what yours is. Name the certifications you fund, the time you protect for learning, and the first course a new hire will take. A vague line about growth opportunities does not compete.

Connect every course to a next role. Build training paths that show which skills and credentials lead to which job, from project coordinator to project manager to program manager. People stay when they can see the next rung and know how to reach it.

Train managers to hold career conversations. Managers are the delivery channel for development, and many are running on empty. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 found that global manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% in 2025, the largest one-year drop in its tracking. Give managers a simple quarterly check-in with three questions. What are you learning? Where do you want to go? What is in your way?

Fund credentials the market recognizes. A recognized certification signals investment in a way an internal course cannot. PMI's 2025 salary survey found PMP holders report a 17% higher median salary than non-certified peers across 21 countries, and nearly 24% higher in the U.S. Some leaders worry that makes people easier to poach. The answer is to tie the credential to a role, a project, or a pay step inside the company, so you are the first to reward the value you helped create.

Let new skills meet real work fast. Unused training fades, and an unused skill starts to feel like a broken promise. Assign a live project where people apply what they learned within a few weeks. We cover this in more depth in How to Maximize Your Team's Performance Through Training.

Make access equal across the workforce. Remote, hybrid, and in-office employees should get the same live, instructor-led options and the same time to attend. Development that only reaches headquarters tells everyone else where they stand.

Measure retention, not completions. Track 12-month retention and promotion rates for employees who completed development against those who did not, plus the share of open roles you fill internally. Completion rates tell you training happened. Retention and internal fill rates tell you it worked.

Why this matters for project teams

Project talent is one of the hardest places to compete. PMI's Global Project Management Talent Gap report projects the world could need up to 29.8 million more project professionals by 2035. It also notes that mature economies, including North America and Europe, face a stalled supply as their workforces age. Hiring your way through that gap gets expensive fast. Growing project managers from within is the more durable play.

Developing project skills in-house also pays off beyond retention. A team trained together shares one vocabulary and one way of running projects, which makes delivery more consistent. It also cuts reliance on outside contractors to fill gaps, and it keeps hard-won project knowledge inside the company when a project ends.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does training reduce employee turnover?

It helps most when it connects to career growth. Career is the top reason people quit in Work Institute's exit interview data, and 73% of trained employees in the TalentLMS 2026 survey said stronger development would make them stay longer. Training with no path to use it can backfire, because it raises skills and expectations at the same time.

Won't employees leave once we pay for their certification?

Some may, since a recognized credential raises a person's market value. The answer is to give that value somewhere to go internally, such as a new role, a bigger project, or a pay step tied to completion. Some employers also pair funded certifications with a service or repayment agreement. The larger risk is not developing people, because lack of career growth is the most cited reason for leaving.

How do you measure whether L&D is improving retention?

Compare 12-month retention and promotion rates for employees who completed development against those who did not, and track the share of open roles filled internally. Add exit interview reasons to the picture, so you can see whether career-related exits are falling over time.

How much does it cost to replace an employee?

Gallup estimates the cost of replacing an employee ranges from one-half to two times that person's annual salary, and it calls the estimate conservative. For a U.S. PMP holder at PMI's reported median salary of $135,000, that works out to roughly $67,500 to $270,000 per departure.

Conclusion and next steps

Learning and development is one of the few retention levers that also makes you easier to hire into. It works when people can see the path on the way in and actually walk it once they arrive. Start with two moves this quarter, a career conversation in every manager's calendar and one credential path tied to a real role.

If you are building project management talent from within, our private team training brings PMP and other PMI certification prep to your team on your schedule.

About the Author

Nate Walter, PMP, is Director of Operations at PMTraining, a PMI Premier Authorized Training Partner that has trained more than 175,000 professionals. More about the team.

Related reading: PMP Training Program for Your Team: A 2026 Summer Guide and How to Maximize Your Team's Performance Through Training.

Sources:

Work Institute, 2026 Retention Report, Employee Turnover Insights and Trends in 2025

Gallup, This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion, 2019

Gallup and Amazon, The American Upskilling Study, 2021

TalentLMS, 2026 Annual L&D Benchmark Report, 2025

LinkedIn Learning, 2025 Workplace Learning Report

Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2026 Report

Project Management Institute, Earning Power Salary Survey, 14th Edition, press release, 2025

Project Management Institute, Global Project Management Talent Gap, press release, 2025