Employers Struggling To Keep Staff

Employers are struggling to retain staff as they deal with a difficult recruitment climate, according to the latest research from CIPD.

The number of respondents reporting retention difficulties rose to 78 per cent in 2006-07 from 69 per cent in 2005-06, according to the Recruitment, Retention and Turnover 2007 survey. The high staff turnover figures were caused mainly by employees leaving to change careers (52 per cent) or to take promotions elsewhere (47 per cent).

Managers and professionals, along with administrative, secretarial and technical staff, were the employee groups most likely to cause retention headaches. Organisations most frequently tried to address these shortfalls by providing more learning and development opportunities, improving selection techniques and increasing pay and benefits.

“There’s a huge jump in retention difficulties. Only the voluntary sector hasn’t been affected,” said Nicola Monson, CIPD research associate. “One reason for this may be that organisations seemed to be doing more in 2005-06 to address these difficulties in terms of improving learning and development and pay than in 2006-07.”

Eighty-four per cent of respondents reported experiencing more general recruitment difficulties – up from 82 per cent in 2005-06. Among these difficulties were problems finding people with the necessary specialist skills (65 per cent), candidates’ excessive pay expectations (46 per cent) and insufficient experience.