Employee Engagement Specialist | Organizational Change Coach | Empowering Organizations to build a competency for ongoing change | Lean-Agile implementation expert with 30+ Years of Innovation | SPCT | Candidate ILM

Your best people aren't going to tell you they're leaving. They're just going to leave.
By the time someone hands in their notice, the decision was made months ago. A promotion path that went nowhere. A manager who stopped listening. A conversation that never happened.

Most companies find out too late. Then they pay 4x what they thought turnover costs when you add the productivity loss, the project delays, the knowledge walking out the door, and the team stretched thin covering the gap.

I spent 20 years implementing transformation programs at Fortune 500 companies. Watched them obsess over efficiency while bleeding millions in preventable departures they never saw coming.

I co-authored "The Trillion Dollar Problem" to document what most executives miss. Then I co-founded 
Clover ERA to fix it.

Clover ERA shows you which teams are about to break. Before the resignations start.

Daily anonymous check-ins surface what's building beneath the surface. Managers see the patterns and get specific prompts to act. You intervene while there's still time.

We don't prevent every departure. We prevent the ones that didn't have to happen. The ones where someone was waiting for a conversation that never came.

Preventing one departure costs a fraction of replacing them.
If you're losing people you didn't see coming, let's talk.

📅 Schedule Your Free Turnover Analysis: https://outlook.office.com/book/TurnoverAnalysis@cloverera.com/?ismsaljsauthenabled
🔍 Or take the free Team Health Assessment: https://cloverera.com/team-health

Clive Hays

$380K to replace her. 
$0 to follow up.
She asked about the senior role last January. 

Her manager said "let's revisit next quarter."

She brought it up again in spring. Same answer.

By summer, she stopped asking.

Last month, she resigned.

"I had no idea she was still thinking about that role."

I asked what happened after she stopped bringing it up.

"Nothing. I assumed she'd moved on. She seemed fine. Focused on her work. No complaints."

I asked if anyone followed up with her.

He checked his notes. Scrolled through months of 1:1s.

"We talked about her projects. Her deliverables. Never circled back to the role."

I asked what she told him in the exit conversation.

"She said she'd been waiting for us to bring it up. That every month we didn't, she got her answer. By August she was already interviewing."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I thought no news was good news."

It wasn't. No news was her giving up on you.

She didn't leave because she didn't get the role. She left because nobody remembered she wanted it.

Who on your team asked for something six months ago that you never circled back to?

Your best people won’t threaten to leave. They’ll just leave. I show you which teams are about to break | Co-Founder, Clover ERA

A CTO told me their head of product was recognized at an all-hands in October. 
She resigned three weeks later. 

$290K to replace her.

I talked to her manager.

"Were there any signs?"

"None. If anything, she got more helpful in her last few months. Started documenting all her processes. Created onboarding guides for the team. I gave her a shoutout in our all-hands for it."

I asked when the documentation started.

He checked. September.

I asked when she started interviewing.

"She told HR it was October."

"Pull up her Slack messages from August."

He did. For the first time, he saw it.

July: "When WE launch this next quarter..."
August: "When this is rolled out..."
September: "People working on this should know..."

"She stopped saying 'we' three months before she left. I didn't hear it."

Nobody does. The shift from "we" to "........" is one of the quietest exits there is. It happens in emails, Slack messages, meetings. The person stops including themselves in the future.

The documentation wasn't preparation for growth. It was preparation for goodbye.

Who on your team recently stopped saying "we"?

$5.7 million. 
That's what turnover actually cost.
His finance team had it at $800K.

A CEO at a 320-person company asked his CFO for the number. What's turnover costing us?

The answer came back: $800K annually. Recruiting costs, some lost productivity, a rough multiplier from an article somewhere. Reasonable-sounding number.

The real number was $5.7M.

The gap wasn't in what they were measuring. It was in what they weren't.

Three senior salespeople left and took their relationships with them. Revenue impact: not tracked. The engineering team lost its technical lead mid-project. Delayed launch: not tracked.

$800K was the cost they could see. $5.7M was the cost that was actually hitting their business.

Seven times higher than what they budgeted. Seven times higher than what they reported to their board.

When he saw the real math, he didn't argue with it. He said: "Why did nobody show me this before?"

Nobody had done the calculation.

This is one of 78 moments like this. Different companies, same pattern: the number they tracked wasn't the number that mattered.

I wrote them down. The book is called Already Gone.

It launches January 28.

What's the number your finance team isn't tracking?

"How many people left last year?"
"We invested $340K in culture."
That wasn't what I asked.

A CFO told me this last month. Proud of the ping pong tables. The catered lunches. The meditation room.

I asked again. How many left?
Fourteen.

$2.1 million in replacement costs. Six times what they spent on perks.
"But the exit interviews said better opportunities."

I asked about one of them. A senior engineer.
"She asked to switch teams in March. Then again in May."
"What happened?"
"VP said the timing wasn't right."
She resigned in July.

His VP had seen her in the game room every afternoon that summer. Told the CFO the team seemed happy.

She wasn't happy. She was killing time between interviews.

The ping pong table wasn't keeping people. It was hiding the problem.
What's your leadership using as proof the team is happy?

"We haven't announced any layoffs." 
"I know. That's why I'm leaving now."

The market was down. Competitors were cutting. Every all-hands felt tense.

He asked his manager: "Should I be worried?" "I haven't heard anything."

He asked his skip-level: "What's the plan?" "We're monitoring the situation."

He asked HR: "Is my role safe?" "We can't comment on future decisions."

Three non-answers. Three signals that nobody would tell him the truth.

So he found a company that would.

His manager was stunned. "We weren't even planning layoffs."

Didn't matter. The silence said everything.

When people can't get clarity, they create their own. And the story they tell themselves is almost always worse than reality.

He wasn't running from layoffs. He was running from the not knowing.

$280K to replace him.

The conversation cost nothing.

One resignation cost $1.2M.
A senior engineer left in March. 
She'd been there 
six years. 

Never made noise. 
Just quietly accepted another offer. Three more followed.

Her manager told leadership: "It's just one. She got a big offer. Nothing to worry about."

Two weeks later, her closest colleague started interviewing.

"If she's leaving, something's wrong."

He was gone by May.

By July, two more followed. Same team. Same reasoning.

"If they're all leaving, why am I staying?"

Four exits. Four "I've accepted another offer" conversations. The manager was blindsided each time.

Leadership called it a "talent market problem."

It wasn't the market.

It was one resignation that made three others feel possible.

The first person to leave rarely leaves alone. They just leave first.

$1.2M gone. 
Someone on your team is the first domino.
Do you know who?

I'm documenting 78 moments like this in a book called Already Gone. 
FREE gifts and WAITLIST LINK under my name above.

CEO of a 320-person company told me just before Christmas that their turnover cost is $800K.
I asked how she calculated it. "Replacement costs. Recruiting fees. The usual."
I pulled up a calculator. We ran the real math together.

Productivity loss during vacancy. 
Ramp time for new hires. 
Institutional knowledge gone. 
Project delays. 
Client relationships rebuilt from scratch.

$5.7 million.
She went quiet.

Most companies track turnover rate. 
Single digit percentage. Looks manageable.

Nobody tracks turnover cost. Seven figures. Hidden in plain sight.

You're not managing a 6% problem.
You're managing a $5.7 million problem.

When's the last time your CFO calculated the actual dollar cost of turnover?

9 out of 10 people who accept a counter-offer leave within 12 months anyway.
The money wasn't the problem. The resignation proved it.

If salary was the issue, they would have asked for a raise. They didn't. They handed in notice.

A counter-offer says "we'll pay you more to stay."

What it actually says: "We knew what you were worth. We just weren't paying it."

That's not a retention strategy. That's a confession.

The employee hears it. Even if they stay, they remember.

Counter-offers don't prevent turnover. They delay it.

How many has your company made this year? That's not a win rate. That's a warning signal.

She gave them eight years.
They gave her a 15-minute call.
The restructure saved $1.1M. The way they 
handled it cost $4.4M.

Her manager told leadership: "It was handled professionally. Clean. By the book."

Two weeks later, a senior engineer asked to talk.

"I watched how they did it. Eight years and she found out in a 15-minute call. No conversation. No warning. Just a calendar invite and a script."

He resigned the following month.

Then another.

"If that's how it ends here, I'd rather leave on my own terms."

By spring, twelve more were gone. All top performers. All watching.

Leadership called it "unfortunate timing."

It wasn't timing.

It was the 15-minute call that told everyone else what they needed to know.

The decision didn't break trust. The execution did.

Someone on your team remembers how the last one was handled.

What did they decide?

I'm documenting 78 moments like this in a book called Already Gone. FREE gifts and WAITLIST LINK under my name above.

Her manager called her "resilient." 
She was doing the work of three people who'd already quit. 

The first one left in March. No backfill. "We'll redistribute temporarily," leadership said. 

The second left in June. Same story. The third in September.

By October, she was running a department that used to have four people.

Her 1:1s became status updates. No time for development conversations. No time for career planning. Just triage.

Her manager wrote in her review: "Handles pressure exceptionally well. A true team player."

She started interviewing the next week.

"Resilient" isn't a compliment. It's a confession. It means someone is absorbing a failure you haven't fixed.

The company celebrated her in Q3. Lost her in Q4. Spent Q1 trying to replace what three people used to do.

Burnout doesn't announce itself. It gets praised in all-hands and quits on a Tuesday.

Who on your team is "handling it well" right now?

"He's finally getting easier to manage."
Eight weeks later: $390K to replace him.

He used to push back on everything. Decisions. Timelines. Resource allocation.

Then one day, he stopped.

His manager told me: "I actually thought we'd turned a corner. He seemed more agreeable. Less friction in meetings."

I asked what changed eight weeks ago.

"We made a call on the product roadmap. He disagreed. Strongly. We went the other direction anyway."

"And after that?"

"He stopped fighting it. I figured he'd finally accepted the decision."

He hadn't accepted it. He'd given up on being heard.

The pushback wasn't the problem. It was proof he still cared enough to fight.

When he stopped, it wasn't alignment. It was surrender.

The silence wasn't agreement. It was the sound of someone planning their exit.

$390K gone. Someone on your team recently stopped pushing back.

I'm documenting 78 moments like this in a book called Already Gone. FREE gifts and WAITLIST LINK under my name above.

Is that growth, or goodbye?

A CFO at a 330-person company told me their senior data engineer quit over a $2,000 training request. 
$280K to replace her. I talked to her manager. 

"Did she seem upset when you declined it?"

"Not really. I told her budget was tight and we'd look at it next quarter. She said 'no problem', never brought it up again."

I asked if they looked at it next quarter.

Long pause.

"No. I forgot."

She didn't forget. She applied to three companies that month. Two of them asked about her development goals in the interview. One offered to pay for the certification before her start date.

She accepted in June. Gave notice in July.

$2,000. That's 0.7% of what they spent replacing her. The course would have taken a week. The backfill took five months.

Her manager still calls it a "compensation issue."

It wasn't. She never asked for more money. She asked to grow. The answer was silence.

What was the last personal development request you said "not right now" to?

I wasn't asking for anything. Now I am. And I'm doing it publicly. 5 weeks of stories about what's really happening with managers. 2 million impressions...

My brother Neil and I spent two years figuring out why good people leave. Then eighteen months building something that shows managers what they're missing before someone resigns. 

Not surveys. 
Not exit interviews. 
The early signals.

We built it with five companies who went deep with us. We didn't scale before we were ready. Now we are.

5 new companies. 50 days. Documented publicly. Wins, losses, lessons. All of it.

Why public? Because I've spent five weeks asking managers to be honest about what's not working. Seems fair I do the same.

Some will tune out. Some will follow along and learn something about B2B sales. Some might be one of the five.

If you're running a company between 200 and 500 people and you want to see what's happening with your team before it's too late - reach out. I've got room for five.

"16,000 layoffs."
That's the number Amazon announced today.
Here's the number they didn't announce:

The people who weren't cut but started interviewing anyway.

Research shows voluntary turnover spikes 30-50% in the 6 months following mass layoffs.

16,000 is the plan.
Another 5,000-8,000 is what actually happens.

Those voluntary exits aren't random. They're the people with options. The ones you wanted to keep.

Amazon budgeted for 16,000.
They'll spend for 24,000.

If your company just announced cuts, your survivors are doing math right now.

Not on the business.
On themselves.

Who on your team is "relieved they survived" today but updating their resume tonight?

$560,000.
"Let me look into it."
That was six months ago. He never brought it up again. Neither did she.
This week's newsletter: what your silence is actually saying.

Two stories from the past week. Same pattern. Same ending. Story one: A senior engineer asked his manager about a promotion. The manager said "let me 

Open article: What Your Silence Is Actually Saying by Clive Hays • 2 min read

Annual survey came back: 82% of employees feel valued.
3 months later: $890K in replacement costs.

The survey wasn't just useless. 
It was wrong.

3 of the people who left had clicked "valued." One told me why.

The survey asked if she felt supported by her manager. She thought: "If I say no, will he see this? Will it affect my review? Will I be labeled as difficult?"

She clicked "Agree."

She wasn't answering honestly. She was answering safely. There's a difference.

By the time the results came back in June, she'd already accepted another offer. The survey captured what she was willing to say in March. It didn't capture that she was leaving.

Her manager was blindsided. "She said she felt valued. I saw the data."
He saw what she was willing to say. Not what she actually felt.

Annual surveys don't measure engagement. They measure what employees think their managers want to hear. That's not data. That's theater.

Your last survey came back positive.

How many of those responses were true?

$47M acquisition. Strategic fit. Strong fundamentals.
Everyone smiled for the announcement photo.
Half the team was already on LinkedIn.
This week's newsletter: What acquirers miss in due diligence.

The deal closed in November. $47M acquisition. Strategic fit. Strong fundamentals. Everyone smiled for the announcement photo. Half the team was alrea

Open article: What Acquirers Miss by Clive Hays • 2 min read

Sabine VanderLinden

Activate Innovation Ecosystems | Tech Ambassador | Founder of Alchemy Crew Ventures + Scouting for Growth | Chair, Board Member, Advisor | Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow-Bayes Business School

I don't just talk about innovation, AI, workforce or digital transformation— I build the bridges that make things real.

As Founder & Venture-Client Partner of Alchemy Crew Ventures, I run global R&D + Adoption Labs that connect Fortune 500 insurers and corporates with the most brilliant tech ventures on the planet. Think of us as the “fast lane” between startup brilliance and enterprise adoption. My themes include FinTech/ InsurTech and deploying AI at scale responsibly. 

What this looks like in numbers:
📍 Accelerated 160+ ventures and sourced 55,000+ startups worldwide
📍 Invested in 35+ early stage startups
📍 Delivered exits like FitSense → Zurich (2018), MyFutureNow → L&G (2019), and Tia Tech → Sapiens (2020)
📍 Created Insurer-led Acceleration and Scaleup programs that turned pilot purgatory into scalable commercial success

But the real story? I help founders land their first million-dollar client, build authentic personal brands, and help corporates cut through the noise to adopt tech that drives real growth.

My world revolves around:
📍 Venture Clienting 2.0 & Corporate Innovation Frameworks
📍 AI (ethics, adoption, emerging risks)
📍 Climate Resilience, Risk Futures & Sustainability Transformation
📍 The Future of Work (where humans + tech thrive together)

Beyond Alchemy Crew:
📍 Co-editor of the bestselling INSURTECH Book
📍 Wrote forewords for the Future of Insurance and Momentum
📍 Lecturer on Corporate Venturing at Bayes Business School
📍 Board + advisory roles across VCs, Scaleups (The CareVoice), foundations (Women to Watch), standards (ACORD Solutions) & global insurers
📍 Top 10 Business Podcast "Scouting for Growth" 
📍 Recognized with 10+ awards, including Most Influential CEO – Insurance Corporate Ventures (2024/2025)

My channels beyond LinkedIn:
x.com: @SabineVdL
instagram: @sabinevdlofficial
Medium: @sabine_vdl
Podcast: Scouting for Growth and Beyond Tech Frontiers
Newsletter: alchemycrew.ventures

What drives me?
Creating value where others see friction.
Turning hype into measurable outcomes.
And making sure technology becomes a force for good, not just another buzzword.

Award List (10+): Insurance Times-Tech & Innovation Awards Winner (2018), Grant Thornton-Face of a Vibrant Economy (2018), Business Insurance-Women to Watch Honoree (2019), Corporate Vision-Venture Validation Firm of the Year (2021), Finalist Women in Insurance Perseverance Award (2021), Awarded Perseverant Company to Watch in (2021), ACORD Awards (2020/2023), Most Influential CEO-Insurance Corporate Ventures (2024/2025).

Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer & Venture Partner

Delivering venture labs that accelerate, industrialize and democratize the way tech ventures engage with corporations. These labs apply acceleration, co-creation, and commercialization techniques to de-risk the way insurers and financial institutions collaborate, grow, and scale their venture-led growth initiatives.

Also, systematizing for a select group of growth ventures the way their engagement with corporations.

You can find out more 👉🏽 https://alchemycrew.com/

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Clive Hays

Sabine VanderLinden

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The Battle

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Sabine VanderLinden

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