Employee Turnover Expected to Rise in Next Five Years

Employee turnover is expected to increase worldwide during the next five years, according to a global survey we at Right Management recently conducted with more than 2,000 internal and external recruiters, human resource executives and hiring managers from 17 countries. Only 14% of respondents globally anticipated a decrease in employee turnover.

Half the survey respondents globally expect higher turnover. About a third foresee no change, and a minority a decrease…all of which points to greater turnover than organizations have been used to dealing with in the past decade.


Expectations of Higher Turnover in Next Five Years
(Percentage anticipating slight or significant increase)

• 59% North America
• 58% Asia Pacific
• 41% Europe
• 49% Global Average

There’s no such thing as typical or average turnover. Turnover varies widely from industry to industry. Moreover, some turnover is healthy, but high turnover is a top concern for all organizations everywhere. Yet, unless current expectations are wrong, most employers are soon going to have to cope with more loss of talent and know-how, greater recruitment and training costs, and all the turmoil entailed with people leaving and waiting for their replacement. And aside from the tangible costs, organizations may lose business opportunities as well as momentum, and the constant departures undermine the trust and engagement of remaining workers.

Employers really need to make greater efforts at identifying and retaining key contributors. Even high turnover may be manageable if an employer is able to keep most of the best workers.

Are you focused on retaining your top-performers?

Work Priorities Overrun Vacation

As Forbes reports, futurists in the 1970s predicted that by now technology would have so shrunk our workloads that we'd all be paddling about in a leisure-and-vacation playland. How wrong were they? Workloads and business priorities are overrunning taking earned vacation time. In fact, nearly half of employees failed to take all their vacation time in 2010. Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing. Although it is an improvement over a year ago, when in the identical survey we found that two-thirds of workers weren’t taking all the time that was due to them.

For many employees, fears of job insecurity and work pressures after layoffs were probably the main reasons why so many gave up vacation time. So it may be that our latest finding reflects a somewhat healthier workplace mindset.

Still, with only half of workers actually taking all of their vacation in 2010, many employees are likely uncertain about their futures. There’s clearly a lot of stress among employees in both Canada and the U.S. There are heavier workloads as well as uncertainty about business viability and the chance of more cutbacks. Leaders would do well to improve employee productivity and wellness by regularly communicating the state of the organization and sharing the role that each employee plays in its future success.

After all, vacation time is an earned employee benefit and it affects work-life balance and overall wellness. Vacation plays a fundamental role in fostering a healthy, productive workforce. Foregoing some vacation days may by itself not prove significant, but when many employees come to feel they can’t take the time to which they’re entitled real harm may be done…and the results can be high turnover, low retention, absenteeism, frequent health or safety claims or a host of other HR problems. Vacation time is essential for balance and wellness.

In my opinion, employers should do all they can to encourage their workers to take the vacation time due to them What’s good for the workforce is almost always good for the business. Business growth depends on the quality of an organization’s talent.

Treat employees like customers and build long-term relationships

Take the time to secure long-term and strategic relationships with your current employees, both average and high performers. Successful employee relationships mean strong retention. This will save your organizations thousands if not millions of dollars by reducing attrition.

If you are able to retain top performers, this transforms what some employees may consider a short-term opportunity into a long-term and genuine partnership. As companies endeavor to secure both share of market and share of mind from customers and prospects, apply the same concept to your employees.

Given the high cost of recruiting, training, and retention, it will invariably cost your company more if you are continually seeking new external talent. Using a long-term and strategic approach and – i.e., growing from within – offers numerous benefits: a sustained organizational culture, evolving institutional knowledge, strong and enduring customer relationships, and a pipeline of internal talent to support and accelerate succession planning.

Engage your employees. Share with them your vision and strategic plan. Ask your employees to review and validate the marketing strategy and tactics used with customers. If employees see sickly quality control practices, poor customer service, and lack of sales and marketing integration, this wil make it impossible to convert high-performing employees into long-term organizational assets. Effective leaders do not micromanage. They recognize, for example, that requiring their team to check in every day and report on their progress is demeaning and not motivating. Instead, build personal and trusting relationships and create win-win solutions.

An organization's marketing and PR activities attempt to build and secure long-term customer relationships. Apply this same concept to your employees. It is far more cost effective and organizationally beneficial to respect and treat your employee well. If employees feel genuine emotional engagement they will be are inspired and commit their full energy, loyalty – and future – to the company.