Why Blaming Recruiters Won’t Fix Your Retention Problem

In the hearing health world, where top talent is notoriously difficult to find, losing a good provider can sometimes feel personal.

You train them, you invest in them, you build your schedules and patient lists around them.
And then, often with little warning, they hand in their notice.

What happens next tends to follow a familiar pattern:
“Who poached them?”
“Is that recruiter targeting us again?”
“Which competitor called?”

We get it. When a valued team member walks, the temptation to blame external forces - especially recruiters - is strong. But from experience, that is rarely the full story.

Recruiters aren’t causing your turnover. They’re just revealing the reasons people already want to leave.

Most exits start long before the resignation letter lands

At Staffing Proxy, we’ve recruited for clinics across the country. And we can tell you, hand on heart, that we don’t spend our time trying to pry happy employees out of good jobs. That goes against all our morals.

But what do we see? Exceptional talent quietly disengaging, burning out, and feeling unseen, unheard, and simply done.

In fact, according to McKinsey, more than half of employees who quit their jobs say they didn’t feel valued by their organization or their manager. Another 51% said they lacked a sense of belonging at work.

In our work at Staffing Proxy, we’ve seen this play out time and time again in hearing health clinics. We find that job hopping in the sector is rarely about money - it’s about meaning.

The minute someone feels overlooked, overworked, or out of step with the culture, they start mentally exiting. And by the time a recruiter reaches out, the question isn’t “Why are they leaving?” It’s: why didn’t they feel they could stay?

It’s easy to look at attrition as something external. But in most cases, the red flags were already waving. Because if people are consistently saying “yes” to outside offers, it’s worth asking: what are they not getting here?

Your culture is either holding people or pushing them

Take for instance MIT Sloan’s research. Reviewing over 1.4 million employee reviews, it was found that a toxic culture is the single strongest predictor of attrition - ten times more powerful than compensation. Ten times.

In hearing healthcare, this has real weight. Providers aren’t just looking for a paycheck. They’re looking for purpose. For manageable caseloads. For leadership that respects the complexity of their work. For a team that has their back on the tough days.

If what they’re feeling instead is pressure without support, growth without guidance, or schedules without flexibility - well, it’s not hard to see why they’d start to entertain other options.

We’ve seen it firsthand:

A raise offered too late
A stay interview booked the day after a notice
A long-overdue career conversation sparked only by a resignation

In hearing healthcare, where emotional labor is high and recognition can be scarce, a positive company culture matters more than ever. Providers need more than a paycheck - they need purpose, trust, and the psychological safety to do their work well.

Clinics that retain well do things differently

From where we sit, working with hundreds of hearing healthcare clients, we see that high-retention clinics don’t wait for exit interviews to find out what’s broken. They’ve done the work before the exit.

They build in career conversations - not just annual reviews.
They train leaders to coach, not just manage.
They regularly check in on wellbeing, not just output.
They offer flexibility without guilt
They promote clarity, autonomy, and recognition, not just productivity.

And they understand that retention isn’t about locking people in or offering competitive compensation. It’s about creating a place they genuinely want to stay.

And if we look at the research, Deloitte found that workplaces with actively managed cultures enjoy 40% higher retention. To add to this, McKinsey adds that a sense of purpose, belonging, and trust dramatically reduces attrition - even in high-stress industries like healthcare.

And the cost of not addressing it?

It’s not magic - it’s just consistency. Because these high-retention clinics understand that the cost of getting this wrong isn’t just financial. They understand that turnover doesn’t just disrupt operations, it disrupts morale. And in specialist fields like hearing health, where replacements aren’t easy to find, the cost multiplies.

In fact, replacing an employee can cost up to 200% of their annual salary. And in hearing healthcare, where providers are in short supply, losing talent can have a ripple effect on:

The lost continuity of patient care
The extra workload on those left behind
The loss of team cohesion
The reputational risk among patients and referral networks

And once the spiral begins - attrition breeding burnout, breeding more attrition - it can be hard to stop.

So, where do we go from here?

Blaming recruiters for high turnover might feel like a short-term explanation. But it distracts from the longer-term opportunity: building a culture people don’t want to leave.

Yes, it is our job to spark a conversation. But most resignations begin long before that call.

Here’s where we suggest starting:

Run structured exit interviews to identify common themes
Audit workload and burnout risk (especially for high performers)
Benchmark internal career development - are you promoting from within?
Train leaders to lead, not just manage
And most importantly: act on what your people are telling you

Because when people feel genuinely supported, developed, and respected, they’re far less likely to answer that recruiter message.

At Staffing Proxy, we don’t just place hearing healthcare providers and healthcare talent. We help clinics build cultures where great talent wants to stay. Because, at the end of the day, while smart hiring is important, it is smart retention that keeps your business sustainable, your patients cared for, and your culture strong enough to weather whatever the labor market throws your way.

Wherever you are in your journey, we’re here to support you. Whether it’s reviewing your hiring strategy or improving employee engagement, we can help.

Book a call with us today for your free consultation.