Keeping high potentials is becoming a risky business and can hit a company’s bottom line.

One in four top employees plans to change jobs in the next 12 months alone, according to a recent study by the Corporate Executive Board, a research and advisory services company. Losing a high-potential employee can cost an employer up to 3 1/2 times that employee’s annual compensation, when considering expenses, such as replacement costs, and contributive costs, such as business relationships and financial contributions.

“Organizations really need to stop the bleeding of their top talent loss to help with their competitive advantage,” said George Penn, senior director of the Corporate Leadership Council at the Corporate Executive Board. “We saw some disturbing trends in the intent of high potentials to leave their current employer.”

This 25 percent statistic is a “significant leap” considering that number was just 10 percent in 2008. The increase could be at least in part attributed to the state of the economy, Penn said. High potentials have been impacted more significantly than other employees, especially with companies restructuring, rounds of layoffs, and the departure of peers and managers.

“High-potential employees have gone through a disproportionate amount of disruptions within their jobs and within their workplace,” Penn said.

Michael K. Burroughs, president of executive integration and coaching services at DHR International, an executive search firm, connects the numbers with manager and executive failure.

“It’s a costly problem — there are costs to bringing leaders on board especially if they’ve been recruited from the outside to the executive level,” Burroughs said. “If you lose somebody it doesn’t happen typically overnight.”

Burroughs said in his experience, high potentials leave after not receiving the attention they wanted or thought they should get. According to the same Corporate Executive Board survey, 64 percent of high potentials said they were unhappy with their development activities.

Talent mapping is one way companies can retain top talent, as this will create a gap analysis, Burroughs said.