This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
ONE in three Australians will leave their employer in the next one to two years, which will add costs to property companies, which will need to hire new staff.
Hays Property’s regional director Adam Shapley said employees are looking for a change, despite the perceived economic uncertainty.
A survey of more than 2,000 candidates found 31% expect to change jobs every one to two years, whilst 39% consider leaving their employer every two to four years. Meanwhile, 30% indicated they will stay with their employer for five or more years.
“A strategy for retaining your top talent and curbing the turnover of staff has many positive outcomes for a business. Firstly, it can help to prevent the cost of unexpectedly having to replace good staff. As most hiring managers know, the cost of such turnover adds significantly to a company’s expenses.
“While it is difficult to fully calculate the cost of turnover it can often equate to 25% of the average employee salary – and this is a conservative estimate.
“When an employee leaves there is the loss of not only valuable industry knowledge which can contribute to your businesses’ future success, but knowledge about your company, your customers, current projects and past history, which can take a long time to regain,” he added.
Shapley said the rate of turnover can be reduced by implementing a few integral but simple retention strategies – and they do not always involve money.
Hays’ top 5 retention tips:
1. Managing performance. This is the key to an employer’s retention strategy. Performance reviews are a simple but essential process which should take place regularly and managers need to be committed to the practice.
2. Your leaders. Front line managers are the key to retention, so you should definitely evaluate the quality of yours.
3. Good relationships. If an employee has good relationships at work they are more likely to stay with a company and feel engaged with their work. So employers need to focus on how they understand, communicate and build good relationships with their employees.
4. Career pathways. Employees can become stale and bored without the proper career development – and this is often a reason why candidates look elsewhere for work. As different organisations have different parameters within which they must work, career development does not always mean promotion, although it certainly can
5. Training & development. Courses aren’t always what training and development is about, nor do they have to take place in a formal classroom. Mentorships are a useful retention tool and can also be used to pass on corporate insight to other employees.
Property Review
