Boost Retention: Solving Hourly Employee Turnover

Is the “Great Resignation” truly over? While broader economic trends may suggest a slowdown, the reality for hourly workforces tells a different story.

According to Legion’s 2025 State of the North American Hourly Workforce report, retention remains a critical challenge. In fact, 49% of hourly employees plan to leave their jobs within the next year. This figure highlights a persistent disconnect between what employees need and what their current workplaces provide.

High turnover does more than increase recruitment costs. It disrupts operations, reduces efficiency, and negatively impacts the customer experience. When experienced employees leave, performance suffers across the business.

Legion’s research and workforce management (WFM) solutions highlight actionable ways organizations can reduce turnover and improve employee satisfaction.

With employee experience expected to remain a major focus among HR and retail leaders, these insights can help organizations build more practical retention strategies for the rest of the year and beyond.

The Top Reasons Hourly Workers Leave—and What HR Can Do About It

Low retention rates are linked to the perception that companies do not prioritize the employee experience.

Are employers creating positive experiences for hourly workers and managers? Recent data suggests a significant gap remains.

Among those planning to leave their jobs, 59% intend to leave their current industry entirely. This suggests the issue often stems from the nature of the hourly work environment itself rather than just a specific role or company.

Understanding what employees want from hourly work, as outlined in Legion’s 2025 State of the Hourly Workforce, is critical to improving retention.

For example, lack of flexibility is more than an inconvenience; it’s a large driver of attrition in frontline teams, with more than 61% of employees identifying it as their biggest non-wage priority.

What Employees Value Most

Understanding what employees value most creates opportunities for employers to improve. When asked to select the incentives that mattered most when looking for a new hourly job, workers identified three clear priorities:

• Flexibility to pick up extra shifts and swap shifts (61%)
• Greater recognition and rewards (46%)
• The ability to easily give schedule input (44%)

Flexible scheduling and recognition programs directly address these priorities and can be enabled through modern workforce management solutions like Legion.

By automating processes such as shift swaps and coverage requests, providing intuitive availability input, and enabling real-time communication through a mobile app, organizations can deliver a more positive and responsive employee experience.

Strategies to Retain Hourly Workers

Organizations can take several practical steps to improve retention and flip the script to reshape the narrative surrounding hourly work.

The key is enabling frontline employees to focus on the parts of their jobs that they enjoy most, the human side of work.

Here are three strategies employers can implement to boost employee satisfaction and retention:

1. Empower Employees to Focus on What They Enjoy

Allow employees and managers to focus on the parts of the job they like the most: being part of a team and meaningful work, not just administrative tasks.
With a modern workforce management tool like Legion, managers reduce scheduling time and have more time to focus on the human side of work, mentoring their teams, and spending time with customers.

Better schedules lead to better outcomes: more engaged employees and satisfied customers.

Before optimizing their labor efficiency, the executive staff at the same international mountain resort occasionally had to operate chairlifts themselves to cover shortages. This was a direct result of inefficient processes. By automating forecasting and scheduling, the resort ensured the right people were in the right places, allowing the entire team to focus on their core responsibilities.

2. Use AI to Create Predictable, Flexible, and Fair Schedules

By using technology to create more predictable schedules, automate time-off requests and shift offers, frontline communications, and more, employers can demonstrate that they are prioritizing a flexible, transparent work environment.

Managers clearly see the value in this approach; 86% of managers express a desire for technology that calculates hourly employee productivity.

Legion WFM creates competitive advantages by forecasting demand factors and automatically generating an optimal schedule.

One hospitality customer serves as a strong proof point for this strategy. After implementing AI-driven scheduling, they achieved a 96% match rate between business needs and employee preferences. This high level of alignment reduces burnout and gives employees the predictability they need.

3. Offer Financial Flexibility With Earned Wage Access

Financial stress is a significant retention risk for the hourly workforce. Employees increasingly expect faster access to their pay.

Getting paid early has rapidly grown in importance. In 2022, only 2% of employees cited early access to pay as a top priority; by 2025, that number jumped to 31%.

Legion WFM enables earned wage access with Legion InstantPay, supporting financial well-being and boosting retention rates. This strategy delivers measurable results:

• 85% decrease in credit product usage
• 11% improved financial situation
• 21% more shifts filled
• 66% decrease in punch inaccuracy
• 25% reduction in absenteeism
• 11% improvement in eNPS

Additionally, and arguably the most important result for retention, 82% of employees feel more positive about their employer with consistent, reliable access to earned wages.

Improving Retention Rates with the Right Tools

Understanding and addressing how employees feel is crucial for improving retention rates.

Employers can make significant strides to improve the employee experience for their hourly workforce by focusing on creating a better employee experience, embracing technology, and offering greater financial flexibility.

Employee engagement software with built-in retention strategies directly leads to positive, measurable outcomes. A modern, intuitive app can increase employee engagement, flexible scheduling can improve morale and reduce turnover, while earned wage access reduces payday loan reliance.

Dive deeper into this year’s State of the Hourly Workforce to explore hourly employee and manager sentiment.

Transform Hourly Employee Experience and Retention

Engagement is a competitive advantage. When employees feel supported by flexible schedules and modern tools, they stay longer and perform better.

Learn how Legion’s Workforce Management solutions, featuring scheduling, performance recognition, and earned wage access, help employers engage hourly employees and reduce turnover.

Schedule a demo today!