I work in mid sized government, before that i worked in private industry that was largely supply chain. I have also worked with owners of large retail restaurant chains in the area.

in government, managers typically do worry about losing "good" staff, because the rules of government and union work typically mean there is almost nothing they can do about it. pay/retention are almost always out of their control. im sorta in that spot right now where the best i can do for two good workers is try and budget for promotional spots for them on my team in the future. i cant even promote them in place very easily (we call that reclassification) as that means having to justify why they are "working out of classification" right now. and explaining how the job has changed to justify a different title that pays more. so on the government side... unless you are upper management that can create new roles, its really hard to retain specific people. instead what you do is make sure everyone is aware that you will help them promote to any place they can. government has zero loyalty. we ultimately cannot protect anyone, so promoting out is the best thing to do when you are worth your skills, so do it. you owe us nothing, we owe you nothing. its purely transactional.

in supply chain work, there was a lot more slack and give and take. I worked for a family owned, mid-sized company that had grown with the military industrial complex, then after some cuts, diversified into many other high precision engineering fields.. IE if you needed extremely precise, small metal worked parts, like precision screws/nuts/parts that had to be exactly correct, like microwave connectors, or things accurate to millionths or billions of an inch, etc, thats what they did. most of it was electrical connectors, but went into many industries, including food. in that job, yea, pay was what you were worth and what you argued for. you might be under market or over it, if you had the right attitude and wore the right hats. This was a job where you had machines that cost $10,000 an hour each to operate, so if you were the guy that pitched in and stayed late to get things working, even when it wasnt "your job" to do so, that kind of thing mattered, and if you werent being recognized for it, its the things you brought up on your own during your reviews because only a bitch doesnt speak up for themselves. yea rude, dont care. fight for you. no one else has to.

in retail restaurants, its far more constrained. there simply isnt enough profit being made for people to be rewarded properly for their contributions. you can have some truly stellar workers, but you still cant bankrupt a location to pay them what they are worth. you can try to reward them in other ways, more flexible scheduling, more trust, better choices on moving to busier stores where they can make more tips/live closer to home/move to a new location they want to live, etc. key people are hugely important as they are reliable. you dont give the keys to the store to the druggy that calls out 3 times a week. you have that person being watched so that they can get the help they need instead. staff rotates so fast in retail that any threats of leaving are mostly pointless. it hurts to lose great people, but churn is just part of the business. its better in this industry to learn about the business itself. cant tell you the number of times ive seen great people ruin themselves by making unrealistic demands.... no one is going to pay store staff more than their regional managers to retain them. at the end of the day, store staff are replicable, and yea, it sucks, but its just not as large a loss as you think in your head.

mind you, all this assumes well managed locations. if you have bad management, all bets are off. they may be totally dependant on you, or may not recognize your value at all. so you can end up being begged to stay at twice the price, or completely ignored and the whole place collapses after you leave.