When you are deciding how much to pay for a role on Get on Board, the retention salary is the lowest compensation that keeps the people already on your team from leaving for a competing offer. It is the floor of a competitive range: pay below it and you risk losing professionals you have already hired, onboarded, and trained.
What a retention salary tells you
- It marks the point where your current team becomes a flight risk. Once market rates climb above what you pay, your best people start fielding offers.
- It is about keeping talent, not attracting it. Retention pay protects the investment you already made in someone.
- It is a floor, not a target. Matching the retention level keeps people in place, but it does not necessarily win you new hires.
Retention salary vs. acquisition salary
A retention salary keeps current employees from leaving. An acquisition salary sits at the higher end of the range and is meant to attract candidates who are not actively looking. Most competitive ranges live between these two points: the retention floor and the acquisition ceiling.
How Insights Pro shows this
Insights Pro reports include a Retention value for each role profile, inside the “Salary ranges that attract market response” card. It is shown as a gross monthly figure in USD and is based on what the hiring market is actually doing, refreshed quarterly so it tracks current movement rather than last year’s data.
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