Turnover up dramatically from 2012
With the job market improving, one-half of companies are reporting higher turnover than last year and three-quarters are bracing for still more employees to leave, according to a survey by coaching and leadership developing and consulting firm OI Partners-Feldman Daxon Partners.
Fuelling that concern, 58 per cent of companies have added or plan to add workers during 2013 while only eight per cent expect staffing to decrease and 34 per cent anticipate no change.
The number of companies with higher employee turnover this year (51 per cent) rose dramatically from last year (30 per cent), found the survey of 153 organizations in North America.
Employers reported higher turnover this year across all organizational levels: front-line workers (51 per cent of respondents had higher turnover), high-potentials (34 per cent), senior executives (29 per cent) and middle managers (27 per cent).
Concern about losing more workers due to the better job market is also running high across all organizational levels: high-potentials (78 per cent of respondents are concerned about losing high-potential workers), middle managers (63 per cent), front-line workers (51 per cent) and senior executives (43 per cent).
Customer service employees are the most difficult to retain, chosen by 28 per cent of respondents, followed by operations and production workers (26 per cent), sales and marketing (24 per cent), information services (23 per cent), accounting and finance (21 per cent), research and development (10 per cent) and human resources (seven per cent). For two consecutive years, no company reported any problem with retaining legal employees.
Retaining talent was selected as the top HR challenge for this year, chosen by 70 per cent of survey respondents. Recruiting the right talent finished a close second (65 per cent), followed by providing coaching to develop employees (48 per cent).
The top methods surveyed organizations are using to retain employees are:
• high-potential workers: coaching programs (55 per cent of respondents), better compensation and benefits (47 per cent), flexible hours and schedules (45 per cent), mentoring programs (40 per cent) and tuition reimbursement (37 per cent).
• middle managers: coaching programs (51 per cent), flexible hours and schedules (49 per cent), better compensation and benefits (41 per cent) and tuition reimbursement (37 per cent).
• senior-level executives: coaching programs (53 per cent), better compensation and benefits (51 per cent), stock options (44 per cent), profit-sharing (29 per cent), and retention bonuses (27 per cent).
• front-line workers: selecting workers more carefully (62 per cent), giving exit interviews to departing workers (55 per cent), better training (55 per cent), better orientation programs (47 per cent), tuition reimbursement (37 per cent), flexible hours and schedules (31 per cent), pre-employment testing (30 per cent) and better compensation and benefits (28 per cent).
