Before your best people leave · Sustainable work
The retention line
01 · Performance
Obstacles accumulate and nobody clears them. Standards drop quietly, and the person stops mentioning it.
02 · Learning
The job stops teaching. Competence without growth reads as stability from the outside and as stalling from the inside.
03 · Enjoyment
The parts they’re best at get squeezed out by the parts that drain them. Nobody decided this; it just accrued.
04 · Belonging
After a reorg or new manager, they contribute less in rooms they used to shape. It’s read as disengagement rather than a signal.
05 · Purpose
The line between the work and the outcome goes dark. Tasks still get finished. The investment behind them doesn’t.
Engagement surveys aggregate. By the time a score moves, the person it belonged to has already decided. The Sustainable Work Profile puts the five conditions in front of a manager and employee together, with language for things that are usually felt and rarely said.
Worth asking first: Which of these five had been quietly false for months — and when could you have known?
Sustainable Work Profile
A practical starting point for better retention conversations.