The NextGen Hub

Two people sitting with their shoes on a desk.

The NextGen Hub / Volume 01

The Loyalty Contract

Default loyalty died with Gen Z. Conditional loyalty lives, and it costs both sides more than they think.

Ormit Talent August 2026 Research: see methodology Readtime: 10 min. Share

The opening

Same hire. Same eighteen months.
Two completely different stories.

Young man with red sunglasses and a pink cap, holding a red telephone.

"Day one, I want to grow here. I told them in the interview."

Day 1

1/5

Two stories. One resignation.
The gap between them is what we're zooming in on.

The stakes

The most expensive misunderstanding
on the labour market today.

The narrative that Gen Z can't be retained is costing organisations more than they realise. As long as organisations believe attrition is inevitable, they don't invest in what prevents it. As long as young talent doesn't use their agency to ask for the things they are missing, they confirm the cliché written about them.

The paradox at the heart of it

A young man at his desk with a young man and woman behind him looking over his shoulders.

65%

of Gen Z want to stay with their current employer as long as possible.

Research by Ormit Talent

CIAO GOODBYE

43%

are considering leaving anyway.Yet, 43 % is currently planning to leave.

Source: iVOX survey by Ormit Talent & D'Ieteren 2021, 1695 Gen Z respondents in Belgium & the Netherlands

Read the 65% on its own, and you get the reassurance organisations crave: they want to stay. Read the 43% on its own, and you get the panic line LinkedIn loves: this generation can't be retained. Read both in the same breath, and you finally hear what Gen Z is actually saying: we'd rather stay than leave. We'll leave if we have to.

The same dual sentence is being spoken on the other side. Organisations name retention as their biggest worry, and design the work in a way that doesn't prevent the exit.

Both sides have skin in the game. Organisations could equip their managers, build the path, and stop treating coaching as an "if there's time" line item. Young professionals could ask for the feedback they say they want, name their ambitions out loud, and learn to navigate an organisation that isn't (yet) perfect.

The 65% is the offer on the table. The 43% is the ticking clock attached to it. The gap between them isn't a personality trait. It's a set of conditions: observable, fixable, and shared.

The table, from both sides

Two sides naming the same problem.

Neither side is acting on it yet.

The organisation's half:

The organisation's half sounds like a scorecard that already knows the answer.

40% of companies grade themselves insufficient on retaining young talent.
Only 20% rate their own retention as very good.

35% name talent exitthe risk of early exit as their single biggest challenge.

The Gen Z half:

Gen Z arrives ready to stay. They expect growth, feedback, and a manager who shows up. They wait for that conversation longer than their reputation suggests. When it never arrives, the 65% quietly becomes the 43%. From their seat, leaving is just reading the signal that this room won’t take them anywhere.

These companies already know something's wrong.
They can see it in their own numbers and feedback.

And there's a second admission, harder to see until you put two questions side by side. We asked 573 organisations what their biggest challenge with young talent is. We got the cliché back: not loyal enough, exit too fast, too much guidance. We asked the same organisations what they actually do for that talent. What is left is the solution staring back: the gap between what employers say about young talent and what they admit they're not doing for them.

"Ze switchen sneller."They switch faster.

"Geen actief beleid hierrond."No active policy on this.

"Zijn niet echt honkvast."They aren't very settled.

"Te weinig begeleiding."Too little guidance.

"Stellen veel eisen."They make a lot of demands.

"On n'investit pas dans les personnes."We don't invest in people.

"Relatief veel jobhoppers."Relatively many job-hoppers.

"Aucun accompagnement."No support whatsoever.

"Young talent wil te snel doorgroeien."Young talent wants to grow too fast.

"Recruitment is stuck in the 1980s."

A grown woman smiling with her hands in her pockets.

“It's like handing the keys to someone who just passed their driving test and expecting them to survive rush hour from day one. At the same time, you ask the driving instructor to coach them, but only at red lights, because the rest of the time he's too busy steering his own school bus full of screaming toddlers. And then we wonder why nobody enjoyed the ride.”

— Alicia Thomas, Talent Strategist

Retention is the new recruitment.

Organisations in Belgium and the Netherlands spend billions every year attracting new talent. Recruitment campaigns, headhunters, employer brand, LinkedIn ads. Inflow gets the attention, the budget, and the dashboards.

Meanwhile, 40% of companies in our research name retaining talent as their biggest challenge, compared with 29% who say recruitment. Another 39% struggle with growing young talent into management roles. People come in fine. They leave over what happens next.

"We hebben KPI's voor wervingskosten, maar van de kosten van verloop hebben organisaties geen goed beeld. En daar zit het grootste deel."

We have KPIs for recruitment cost. But most organisations have no clear picture of what attrition costs them. And that's where most of the money goes.

— Yvette Ammerlaan, Managing Director Ormit Talent Nederland in Het Financieele Dagblad: Retentie is het nieuwe recruitment, 2026.

A note on the word "retention"

There's something quietly telling about the word retention. It belongs to the language of things, not people. We retain water, we retain heat, we retain whatever would otherwise slip away. Built into it is the assumption that talent is already halfway out the door, and that the job is to hold on a little harder.

But no one's ever been held into loyalty. The tighter the grip, the sooner they go. What keeps someone around is having a real reason to stay: work they care about, people who notice them, some sense of where they're headed. So we keep the word, but we turn it on its head. Retention isn't about holding people in. It's about building something they'd never choose to leave.

Ormit Talent · point of view

Loyalty isn't dead. It's waiting to be earned.

Default loyalty, staying because it's expected, because that's what you do, because leaving looks bad on a CV, was never the strongest glue.

What's actually here is conditional loyalty. Both sides bring conditions. Meet them, and people stay. The majority of Gen Z lean toward job security, without giving up on growth (source : iVOX, 2021). The reputation says restless. The data says eager but cautious. Retention budgets keep getting spent on the wrong shelf: recruitment campaigns and perks, instead of the conversations that actually keep people.

Of the companies reporting barely any challenges with young talent, 37% invest heavily in employer positioning. Of companies reporting major challenges, that figure drops to 5%. The conclusion is clear: the companies that put in the work keep their people. The ones that don't, lose them. But one-sided effort isn't enough either; a contract with one signatory isn't a contract.

The organisation's side

Build the path before they have to ask for it, and be clear about what good work looks like here. Equip your managers to coach, not just to deliver. Make development structural, not a perk. And make the bigger picture visible: what you stand for, where you're headed, and how this work moves it forward, something people can actually get behind. Hold these, and you give loyalty something to stand on. Drop them, and you've designed the exit yourself.

Gen Z's side of the contract

Stay engaged, not just present. Earn your footing before you set out to rewrite the rules. Say what you're working toward; your manager isn't a mind reader. Ask for the feedback and direction you want, out loud. Own the contribution you make, and get behind what the organisation is actually for. Learn to navigate an organisation that isn't (yet) perfect; the perfect one doesn't exist. Hold these, and your loyalty has somewhere to grow. Let them slide, and you become the cliché you never were.

Both sides walk in with assumptions. Talent assumes the growth will arrive as a logical consequence of doing good work. Organisations assume loyalty will arrive as a reward for hiring well. Neither assumption survives the chaotic reality of day-to-day collaboration. The contract only takes effect when both parties sign it.

Three drivers.

The contract is put to the test by three key drivers, each shaping what working life really feels like. Together, they reveal whether the contract between employer and employee holds up in practice. And each one calls for commitment from both sides. Let's take a closer look at these retention drivers, one by one.

Driver 01

The Manager Effect

THE MANAGER.READ NOW →

Driver 02

Where Are We G(r)owing?

GROWTH.READ NOW →

Driver 03

A Ping-Pong table is not a Retention Strategy

BELONGING.READ NOW →

The manager tells young talent they are not alone. Growth tells them where they are going. Connection tells them the journey is worth making. When all three are present, the data shows something remarkable: people stay not because they have to, but because they want to.

When one is missing, the others start to erode. A good manager without a clear path feels like being supported toward nothing. Growth without connection feels like climbing alone. Connection without a future feels warm but empty. The three are not independent levers. They are a system, together forming the core of the loyalty contract between employer and employee.

That is what the data shows. And that is where the real work begins.