While work policies are in place to protect workers in many instances, there are working environments in which organizations are either unincentivized or unable to protect workers. This is particularly true for frontline workers and their interactions with the public. I draw on cross-sectional time series data across 2,609 counties and 44 states to investigate the effects of public health policies on worker turnover in low, medium, and high-risk industry contexts. I take advantage of state policy variation to examine the effects of strict and non-strict mask mandates on county-level worker turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to the widespread introduction of vaccines. Using CBPS matching paired with differences-in-differences estimation, I find that mask mandates significantly reduce turnover rates overall and result in large reductions in county-level turnover rates in high-risk working environments especially. This negative effect is found to be even stronger when policies are strict, or in other words, announced with specific consequences for non-compliance. These results highlight the importance of government policy for frontline worker safety and its impact on meaningful workplace outcomes. Future research would benefit from further examination of the relationship between public health policies and worker behavior.