What you’ll learn in this article…
- Dr. Matthew Call's Journal of Management study tracks star value over careers.
- Early-career stars often create more value than their pay reflects.
- Mentoring programs show a 23 point retention advantage over nonparticipants.
Individual output wins early; peer influence wins later. A star who outperforms everyone can look invaluable in year one and overpaid by year ten. Research in the Journal of Management by Dr. Matthew Call at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School traces that shift, as reported in How the Value of Star Employees Changes Over a Career. Early-career stars often generate more value than compensation reflects because they lack visibility and bargaining power.
As individual output levels off, value moves to mentoring, sharing institutional knowledge, and developing future stars. For internal communication management, that makes communication skills the currency of value. The practical question is whether organizations update rewards before a star walks out.
The Research: How Star Employees' Value Shifts Over a Career
Does an organization still get its money's worth when a star employee stays with it for years? The answer, according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of Management,1 is more nuanced than a simple cost-benefit calculation.
The study, "Pay Premiums and Peer Spillovers: Unpacking the Value Proposition of Employing Stars as They Age" by Michael D. Ulrich and Matthew L. Call of Texas A&M's Mays Business School, parses a star's value into two components. The pay premium, what an employer pays above the star's individual output, increases with age. Peer spillovers, the positive effects a star has on colleagues' performance, also increase with age. Early in a career, stars create outsize value through individual output while lacking visibility and bargaining power, so they can appear underpaid. As stars gain experience, their individual productivity levels off, but their pay and status keep rising, which can make them look overpaid if you only measure individual contributions.
Related research by Call and coauthors, using patent data from 2000 to 2022 across 291 firms and more than 214,000 inventors, finds a similar pattern: high performers shift from personal attainment toward legacy building, with tacit knowledge spillovers rising as career tenure increases.2 This broader evidence suggests the dynamic extends beyond one occupation or sector.
For organizational communication and talent management specialists, the takeaway is clear: a star's value does not decline; it changes shape. The challenge calls on communication skills to make that shift legible to peers, managers, and the stars themselves.
From Individual Contributor to Mentor: The Career-Stage Value Curve
The conversation about star employees is moving away from a single productivity score and toward a career-long value curve. Early-career stars often generate more value than their compensation reflects, because they lack visibility and bargaining power. Their individual output can be exceptional while pay lags behind, a gap that closes only after the star builds a reputation and gains negotiating leverage. Later, the pattern flips. Experienced stars see their direct output level off, even as their visibility and negotiating power increase. On paper, they can look overpaid when only individual contributions are counted.
The Shift to Multiplier
Matthew Call of Texas A&M's Mays Business School compares the shift to musicians who stop chasing solo chart hits and instead produce and mentor other artists. In the same way, experienced stars reallocate value creation rather than losing it. They share institutional knowledge, mentor less experienced colleagues, and help peers succeed, all soft skills for communications professionals. This reframes the career-stage value curve as a transition from individual contributor to multiplier, where success is measured by the growth of the team rather than a personal tally.
Why the Perception Gap Matters
That gap between real value and perceived contribution is a communication challenge, especially leadership communication under pressure. If peers and managers only see the leveling off of direct output, they may misread the star as coasting. Internal communication can make the multiplier role visible and legitimate, preventing workplace conflict and turning a potentially awkward career stage into a recognized leadership phase. This reframing helps everyone see how the star's value changes over time.
Compensation, Visibility, and the 'Overpaid' Perception Problem
Experienced stars can easily look overpaid when managers only measure individual contribution. Early in a career, a star's outsized output may actually exceed compensation because they lack visibility and bargaining power. Later, the math flips: individual output levels off, but visibility and negotiating power rise, pushing pay upward while a narrow productivity metric stays flat. The result is a perceived gap between what the star is paid and what they appear to produce.
Why the gap widens
The gap is not necessarily evidence of poor pay decisions. It is often a measurement problem. A seasoned star may spend more time coaching peers, sharing institutional knowledge, mentoring junior colleagues, and helping others avoid costly mistakes, acts that depend on building trust in communication. Those activities do not show up on an individual output report, but they create real value across the team.
A better metric for star value
Managers can reframe the evaluation by tracking team-level performance lifts attributable to the star. Instead of asking "how much did this person produce," ask "how much more did the team produce because this person was here." When mentoring, knowledge-sharing, and developing future stars are counted as value creation, the perceived overpayment often disappears. Over a career, the star's contribution shifts from individual output to organizational capability, and knowing how to communicate change to employees makes that shift visible to peers and leadership. Without that reframe, high performers may feel undervalued or over-monitored, and organizations may lose the very people who make teams great.
The Communication Work of Becoming a Mentor
Trust-building before the title change
Dr. Matthew Call's research points to a subtle risk: a star who consistently outperforms peers can be read as a threat rather than an asset. Communication professionals can help high performers see that perception, understand why empathy matters, and adjust their approach. Instead of public corrections or solo heroics, stars can invite colleagues into decisions, credit teammates in shared wins, and frame their own expertise as a resource others can borrow. A star who asks for input before presenting a solution signals respect for colleagues' judgment. Building trust is not a soft add-on; it is the prerequisite for influence.
Knowledge-sharing as leadership practice
Mentoring is fundamentally a communicative role, not just a title change. Stars must translate tacit know-how into clear explanations, adapt coaching to different learning styles, and listen for what colleagues already understand. The shift from doing to explaining requires new habits: asking open questions, checking for comprehension, and resisting the impulse to simply finish the task themselves. Active listening, attention to body language and verbal communication, and patience for learning curves turn individual expertise into shared capability.
Delegation demands new conversation patterns
As responsibility grows, stars cannot complete everything alone. Delegating work and relying on colleagues means setting explicit expectations, offering developmental feedback, and requesting help without signaling weakness. Each of these is a communicative act that reinforces peer support and lets the mentor's value show up through other people's success. Those habits also make peers more willing to offer feedback in return, creating a loop of mutual support.
Internal Communication Strategies That Support Star Talent Transitions
In 2026, 71% of internal communication teams track engagement metrics, and 44% track turnover or attrition.1 For star employee transitions, the real work starts when organizations stop treating a role change as a single announcement and start managing it as an ongoing communication process.
Formalize the Mentor Narrative
Structured knowledge-transfer channels help reposition stars as mentors without ambiguity. Create dedicated spaces like internal "office hours," cross-functional panel discussions, or recorded masterclasses where experienced stars share institutional knowledge. Peer recognition programs reinforce the shift: public "multiplier" awards or spotlight stories that highlight how a star helped a colleague succeed. Cross-team visibility campaigns can show a star working with new groups, not just delivering individual wins.
Use Retention-Linked Metrics
Don't measure only reach. Strong channel adoption is 70% or more of the workforce actively using internal platforms each month. While average internal email open rates hover around 21% for broad sends2, targeted messages to small groups often see a median open rate of 73%.3 Track engagement scores, eNPS, and voluntary turnover by high-potential cohort over time to see whether mentor repositioning actually retains stars.
Preempt Peer Resentment
Communication teams can formally message a star's shift in responsibility, drawing on the strategic value of communications leadership, to reduce peer resentment. Instead of a generic "new role" email, explain what changes for the team: who gains access to the star's guidance, how decisions will now be delegated, and what success looks like when peers grow. Manager cascade completion ensures leaders deliver that message consistently. Then follow up with pulse surveys after major transitions and share recognition moments that celebrate peer wins tied to the star's mentoring. This turns managing high performers into continuous work in effective business communication techniques, not a one-time event.
Like musicians who shift to producing and mentoring other artists, star employees create value by helping colleagues succeed, sharing institutional knowledge, and developing future stars.
