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HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 33 Opinion & Commentary EXPERT'S CORNER Closing the retention gap for key employees By Christopher Richards E very company has employees whose impact extends far beyond their titles. They hold critical relationships, carry institutional knowledge, lead important initiatives and solve problems outside their job descriptions. Losing them would materially affect the business. Leaders usually know who these people are. The question is whether the company has a specific long-term strategy for keeping them. Most organizations offer broad benefits to the workforce: competitive salaries, annual bonuses, health insur- ance and retirement plans. At the other end of the spectrum, senior executives may receive equity, nonqualified deferred compensa- tion, long-term cash awards or other executive benefits. But between those two groups is a retention gap. It includes the engineer who holds an important customer relationship. The operations leader who understands how everything works. The salesperson whose departure would put revenue and customer relationships at risk. The rising manager competitors would gladly hire. These employees may be more expensive to replace, yet the long-term strategy for retaining them is often no different from what is offered to the broader workforce. Competitive compensation may keep an employee satisfied, but it does not necessarily create a compelling reason to stay. A higher salary can be matched. An annual bonus rewards past performance but rarely creates enduring value. A retirement-plan contribution is valuable, but a compet- itor can offer something similar. Equity, deferred compensation and long-term cash awards can all be effec- tive. But depending on the organization, they may be unavailable, limited to senior executives or designed primarily around a future payout. The issue is not that companies lack compensation programs. It is that many lack a distinct strategy for key contributors who fall below the executive tier but whose importance to the business exceeds their position on the organizational chart. That strategy does not have to apply to everyone. Even in an organization with hundreds of employees, the rele- vant group may be relatively small. It also does not automatically require spending more. The starting point is identifying those individuals and asking a more precise question: What can the organization help these employees build that they could not realistically build as quickly on their own? For one employee, the answer may be retirement flexibility. For another, it may be family protection, greater finan- cial security, preparation for future care needs or the ability to leave something meaningful behind. Employees at similar compensation levels can have very different priorities. Simply adding another standardized benefit may not be enough. The employer must also be protected. A meaningful long-term investment should reward continued contribution, include clearly defined conditions and protect the company if the employee leaves prematurely. This is where retention becomes a matter of design rather than reaction. Leaders can begin with three ques- tions: Who would materially affect the business if they left? What is the company doing specifically for them? And does that investment create lasting value for both the employee and the organization? Companies spend significant amounts recruiting, compensating and replacing important people. Yet, many wait until a key contributor resigns before discussing what it might take to keep them. By then, the decision has often been made. Every company has people it cannot afford to lose. Leaders know who many of them are. The real question is whether the company has intentionally built a reason for them to stay. Christopher Richards is the founder and CEO of Legacy as a Benefit, an exec- utive benefit and employee retention strategy firm based in Connecticut. EXPERT'S CORNER Data center boom puts zoning in spotlight By Andrew R. Morin A rtificial intelligence has seem- ingly, overnight, integrated into our daily lives. From requesting a recipe to a Fortune 500 company automating tasks, we have come to rely on AI for its efficiency, convenience and productivity. With growing demand for AI tech- nologies comes a stark question – where will the data centers that fuel AI be built, what are their potential impacts and how can those impacts be mitigated? Digital backbone Data centers power AI systems by providing the computing, storage and networking necessary to process vast amounts of data. These facil- ities accommodate thousands of servers that train AI models and generate responses. AI tools like ChatGPT rely on data centers to perform the calculations required to understand prompts, retrieve information and produce responses in real time. Demand has grown rapidly as businesses, govern- ments and consumers increasingly adopt AI-powered tools. Community impacts As demand for data centers grows, so do public concerns about their potential impacts. Among the most commonly cited concerns: Electricity demand: Data centers require substantial electricity. A single ChatGPT response uses 10 times more electricity than a Google search; using generative AI in each Google search would consume the annual output of four to five nuclear reactors. Water usage: Data centers use significant quantities of water to cool their machines. A medium-sized data center can consume approximately 110 million gallons annually, while larger facilities can use up to 5 million gallons per day. Noise: Data centers produce persistent noise from cooling equip- ment and backup generator testing. Without adequate mitigation, data centers can disturb nearby residents who face elevated risks of annoyance and sleep disturbance. Pollution: Data centers connected to an electric grid increase emissions from fossil-fuel power plants, including fine particulate matter, nitric oxide and sulfur dioxide. Emissions from diesel backup generators include nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. Zoning controls Municipalities administer zoning laws that control where and how data centers can be built and oper- ated, placing them at the forefront of weighing data center benefits against their potential impacts. The benefits of data centers should not be ignored — they generate substantial property tax revenue, garner private investment and create construc- tion and permanent technical jobs. On a national scale, AI can bolster American business competitiveness and enhance U.S. military capabilities. Developers, municipalities and inter- ested parties alike should be attuned to how data centers can and have been regulated. Municipalities that do not enact data center-specific regulatory standards risk forfeiting control over their development. For example, Stratos, a 40,000-acre data center project in Box Elder County, Utah — covering an area roughly the size of Manhattan — is moving forward with minimal local government oversight because the county had not established zoning regulations before the project was proposed. To plan for data centers, municipal- ities have certain land use controls at their disposal. One tool is a zoning moratorium, which temporarily suspends a partic- ular type of development while local officials establish regulations governing that use. In May, for example, the town of Morris, Connecticut, enacted a one-year moratorium prohibiting data center development. Moratoria, however, must be limited in duration and scope, making them a short-term solution to a long-term planning need. Another tool is zoning regulations. The town of Groton has developed regulations that limit data center size and proximity to other data centers, restrict cooling infrastructure and fuel sources, and establish noise mitigation, fire suppression, utility agreement and buffer requirements to protect nearby residential districts. Other municipalities have imposed outright bans or restrictions. Mansfield, Massachusetts, for example, recently banned data centers requiring more than 10 megawatts of electricity. While data centers may be an emerging land use, developers should anticipate a regulatory process akin to other complex proposals, which can include layers of oversight from municipal, state and federal government agencies. Andrew R. Morin is an associate in the Real Estate group at law firm Hinckley Allen. Christopher Richards Andrew Morin