What’s the most dire problem facing the tech industry right now? It’s a complicated question, but if you had to pick one particularly thorny challenge, you could hardly do better than focusing on retention.

According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, tech faces a whopping high turnover rate of nearly 60 percent. You may think that this alarmingly high number has to do with the industry being dynamic or with a large number of smaller startups all vying for talent, but turnover plagues the biggest players, too: the average tenure of an employee at Google is 1.1 years; Uber, with 1.8 years, is only slightly better; and, with an average tenure of 2.1 years, Dropbox is near the top of the list.

The High Cost of Turnovers

According to the Work Institute, each single employee turnover costs the employer something in the neighborhood of 33 percent of that employee’s salary. Another recent study by SHRM paints an even bleaker picture, showing that the cost of replacing an employee may be as high as nine months of that employee’s salary.

And then, of course, there’s the time it takes to find a replacement. According to new benchmarking data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire was nearly $4,700. If you’re hiring for a job that pays $60,000, you may spend $180,000 or more to fill that role.

The turnover, timing, and training of new hires are costly realities facing all businesses today. In areas ...