Survey shows slowdown in labour turnover

Citation

(2003), "Survey shows slowdown in labour turnover", Career Development International, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/cdi.2003.13708bab.007

Survey shows slowdown in labour turnover

Survey shows slowdown in labour turnover

The latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) survey shows a marked decrease in labour turnover.

The survey, which covers the year 2001, shows that while the redundancy rate continued to rise during the year, the quit rate fell sharply, as the pace of total employment growth slowed in line with lower private-sector recruitment activity, dragging down the overall turnover rate.

Sales staff had the highest turnover rate, at 23.9 per cent, which was significantly higher than that for managers, at 12 per cent. Craft and skilled manual employees had the lowest turnover rate, at 9.6 per cent.

The CIPD chief economist, John Philpott, said: "Sales staff were the only occupational group to buck the overall trend and show an increase in turnover. In the retail sector, this may be to do with a continued strong performance, and employers competing for staff to meet buoyant consumer demand."

The research also shows that almost half of the organisations surveyed (47 per cent) made redundancies in 2001 – a figure that remains unchanged from the previous year. The most commonly cited reason was reorganisation – reported by 53 per cent of organisations that made staff redundant.

The proportion of respondents that operated a recruitment freeze climbed from one-quarter in 2000 to almost one-third (32 per cent) in 2001.

Almost 70 per cent of respondents experienced difficulties in recruiting in the first half of 2002, down from 77 per cent in the same period in 2001. Organisations took an average of 9.5 weeks to fill a vacancy in the first six months of 2002 – down from 11.1 weeks in the same period in the previous year.

The average cost of labour turnover per employee in 2001 was £3,462 per leaver. Turnover among managers incurred the highest costs, at an average of £5,699 per leaver. Most respondents (66 per cent) reported that labour turnover had a negative effect on the performance of their organisation. Just less than 10 per cent thought that the effect of turnover on performance was positive.