With employee turnover rising, Gale Associates, Inc., a consulting engineering firm headquartered in Rockland, Massachusetts, sought to understand the factors driving attrition. Based on the results of an internal survey, they implemented measures to ensure pay equity, clearer pathways for employee growth, and greater flexibility to support wellbeing and work-life balance.
Those efforts improved turnover by 15 percent from 2024 to 2025, while participation in employee development and retention programs continues to grow. The Boston Women's Workforce Council (BWWC) also presented the company with a 2026 Wage Equity Impact Award for its commitment to advancing pay equity and workplace opportunities through participation in BWWC’s 100% Talent Compact.
The Wage Equity Impact Awards recognize employers that have demonstrated a commitment to understanding and addressing gender and racial wage gaps through data analysis, transparency, and continuous improvement. Gale signed the 100% Talent Compact in 2024, joining hundreds of other Greater Boston, Massachusetts, employers in the effort to better understand wage disparities and identify opportunities for improvement.
Gale launched their internal Employment and Diversity Survey in 2024, gathering feedback about workplace experience throughout the organization of 100-plus employees in offices across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Florida. They repeated the survey in 2025.
According to Lynette Young, Gale’s Director of Human Resources, compensation emerged as a major concern. Employees sought better pay transparency so they could understand how compensation decisions were made and trust that pay was fair, competitive, and equitable.
Based on the survey results, company leadership recognized that compensation was directly tied to retention and long-term employee satisfaction, Young said. As a result, “We made big changes as far as our pay structure.”
That includes a companywide salary benchmarking initiative launched in June 2025. Using market data from compensation intelligence provider Payscale, the organization reviewed roles against external salary benchmarks, while also considering internal factors for each employee such as experience, education, and responsibilities. This allowed leadership to identify where compensation adjustments were needed and create a clearer framework for compensation decisions across the firm, Young said.
They then formalized the process into an ongoing cycle. The firm now conducts comprehensive salary benchmarking reviews ahead of their annual salary cycle and shares the information with managers to help in conversations with their staff. Six months later, the firm reviews the data to maintain alignment with internal and external benchmarks. Gale’s human resources department creates a spreadsheet showing where each employee’s salary lands against the average.
“We try to pay above the average,” Young said. “I think it has helped our retention, just to make sure we’re paying our employees fairly and equitably. In the past, we were more reactive than proactive, so someone would come to us and say they got another offer and we might give them an increase to stay. Now we want to make sure we’re paying fairly and above average so employees don’t need to look elsewhere.”
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Still, the firm recognized that compensation alone would not solve retention challenges. Survey results showed that employees wanted clearer pathways for growth, so Gale created career progressions for every role, illustrating what it takes to get the next promotion.
“It’s pretty cut and dried,” Young said. “We like to promote, and we like to promote within. We think it’s a good tool for growth for employees and a good retention tactic as well.”
Gale also offers a formal mentorship program tailored to individual needs and goals. Every year in the late fall, they send out an application for mentors and mentees.
“It asks specific questions like, ‘What are you hoping to get out of this? What is your goal? What are some of your hobbies?’” Young explained. “I gather all the applications and match the mentors to the mentees based on what they’re looking to complete and the goal they want to achieve.”
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The program kicks off in January. Mentors and mentees receive a handbook and participate in training, then they meet once a month from January through June.
At that point, Young sends out a survey asking what could be improved next time. “We take that into consideration and make improvements, then do a wrap-up,” she said.
Some employees stay with the same mentor each year, while others switch based on a new goal.
“We’ve seen people want to be paired with a mentor from our building enclosures group to learn a specific skill,” Young said. “We’ve had someone in building enclosures want to learn more about structural. We’ve had someone in structural want to learn more about financials and operations, so we paired them with our CFO. It really ranges based on what they’re looking to get out of the program, and it could really be anything.”
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Young said they take into consideration if someone wants to meet in person, but they also open it up regionally to give employees a chance to virtually connect with staff in other offices. “We might have someone in Rockland paired with someone in Maryland or Florida,” she said. “It just kind of builds camaraderie.”
In addition, the company offers regular employee training opportunities ranging from OSHA to professional registration support.
To further support employees, Gale offers a unique college loan repayment benefit — for every employee and their dependents, no matter what type of degree.
“Coming out of school you have college loans, and we have a lot of people sign up for that,” Young said. “At the other end, we have employees with kids going to college, and they can use the benefit as long as they’re a cosigner on the loan. It could be the spouse, too — any dependent of the employee. It could be for nursing; it could be for any type of degree.”
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After employees work at the company for a year, Gale contributes $100 per month directly to loan repayment ($150 per month after three years of service), up to a total of $12,600 over an employee’s tenure. “That could be for one person or it could be for three dependents,” Young said.
In addition to supporting retention, the college loan repayment program helps attract new talent.
“We go to a lot of college fairs for all of our offices,” Young said. “We talk about the college loan repayment and the other benefits we offer, and that always seems to be one that brings them in the door for an interview. They’ll mention that was a benefit that piqued their interest.”
On top of that, “We do a lot of reach-outs through LinkedIn and mention all of our benefits,” Young said. “We do think that helps increase response rates.”
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In Gale’s Employment and Diversity Survey, employees also identified work-life balance as an important issue. “We got more flexible with COVID, but over the past few years we took it to the next level,” Young said.
In addition to offering hybrid schedules, the company launched a year-round flex-time initiative as an option for employees.
“A lot of companies will do summer hours, but now we offer year-round hours which our employees seem to enjoy,” Young said. “They can front-load their time during the week, then on Fridays we shut the office down at 1 p.m.”
To build trust and transparency — another key factor identified by employees — Gale started holding town halls every six months.
“Our managing principal runs them and other managers participate,” Young said. “We talk about what’s going on with the firm. We’ll share financial information and any topics that are important to staff. We try to be as transparent as possible.”
Compensation was the starting point for retention efforts, but Gale found that creating a workplace where talented people stay depends on combining pay equity, professional development, and employee wellbeing into a broader strategy for employee growth and trust.
