The minting of new millionaires is a well-known phenomenon among some startups with IPO ambitions. If an employee gets in on the ground floor of a new business and amasses equity grants in the company over time, they could come into an enormous amount of wealth quickly when said company debuts on the stock market.

This isn’t the case for all IPOs, but it certainly was when SpaceX went public earlier this year. When Anthropic has its IPO in mid-November, some 3,000 employees are set to become multimillionaires, according to an analysis cited by the Washington Post from Hill.com, a platform tracking private market transactions. Another 1,200 employees will likely become deca-millionaires, while 50 early employees could become centimillionaires (Anthropic has 5,300 employees total, per an S-1 filed ahead of its IPO).

“Depending upon when you joined an organization, you could be coming into life-changing wealth,” Lauren Tropeano, chief people officer at Docebo, an AI-enabled learning management system, explained.

What motivates employees to keep working after they become millionaires (or better) overnight? HR leaders, analysts, and consultants told us about the strategies they use to retain top talent amid an IPO, from offering additional compensation to new opportunities.

Start early. Some HR teams start thinking about retention well before their organizations list on the stock market, sources told us.

This is the case at Deel, an HR tech platform with ambitions to go public. “When you go public, your equity is not just a thought in your brain. It’s like a number, right? You see it, you’re like, ‘we can do something with this,’” Nadia Alaee, senior director for HR business partners and people programs, said.

Alaee said Deel’s HR business partners are currently focused on identifying “key players” among the company’s leadership, and what succession looks like for people in those critical roles. Deel’s people team built an “attrition risk modeler” that analyzes employees’ likelihood of leaving the company, based on factors like their time in the role, last promotion, and where compensation falls within their salary band.

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