The Department of Labor recently released some positive numbers for the state of the US job market. Though the unemployment rate remains high at around 8.3 percent, the market is improving, with an estimated 227,000 new jobs created in February. This small improvement is expected to accelerate as some economists predict we're headed for further economic recovery.

This news is bittersweet for many HR pros that may be facing high risk for employees leaving the company as jobs open up elsewhere. A common reason employees leave their employer is dissatisfaction with pay and benefits, and with countless studies showing employees' negative perceptions about losing valuable benefits in recent years due to the recession, having employees leave because they don't appreciate their benefits could cost your company huge amounts of money.

Of course the cost of losing an experienced employee and retraining a new one varies by industry and employer, but the DOL has been cited as estimating that it costs about 33 percent of a new recruit's salary to replace a lost employee. Even just five employees making $40,000 a year leaving your company could cost you $134,000 in productivity loss and training costs. Higher level jobs can cost an employer even more to replace—up to 150 percent by some estimates.