With the economy coming back, employers are increasingly worried about retaining stressed-out employees who survived cutbacks, pay and benefit reductions and increased workloads, experts say.

Some employers are taking the opportunity to review their workplace cultures and how they recognise employees, re-examining everything from telecommuting to the structure of rewards programmes and charity participation. The major challenge: doing it on a budget.

"Companies are not going to want to spend any money," said Hank Stringer, principal at Stringer Executive Search of Austin, Texas, and co-author of "Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business."

Twenty-eight percent of workers in a CareerBuilder survey this year said they expected to switch fields in the next two years, looking for more interesting work, pay, chances for advancement or stability.

"Employee satisfaction is really poor, and when job creation starts there's going to be churn," said Jimmy Taylor, chief operating officer for Novotus, a Texas employment-services firm. "I think most companies just really haven't started taking that into account yet." Restoring pay and benefits might be difficult. "These cuts are down to what the market rate is for today's environment," he said.

Minimally, employers should "be talking to employees," Taylor said.

"It's real critical to keep an open line of communication, find out what the struggles are, address them if they can and look for solutions: salary, workload," he said.

Companies most actively engaging employees tend to be ones that already are recognised as attractive workplaces, experts say.