High job turnover has always been a concern for employers. In retail, sales and HR especially, turnover can be high, and finding ways to keep employees can feel like a losing battle. In 2022, data from LinkedIn found that HR roles had the highest turnover rate of any job function. If even the people who hire and recruit others aren’t staying put, something’s off.
A strong job market gives workers more options, which means more competition for employers trying to find and keep good people. So how can employers hold on to their employees, especially in roles with high turnover? Let’s start with what turnover means and who it affects most.
What is high job turnover?
According to the Academy to Innovate HR, turnover is the number of people who leave a company relative to the number who work there over a period of time. Whatever the reason someone leaves, turnover tells you how often positions need to be filled again.
To measure your turnover rate, divide the number of employees who left during the year by the average number of employees you had over that year. That number shows how your retention compares with other organizations in your industry.
There’s no single answer for making sure employees never quit (or retire). But there are common reasons people leave or switch industries entirely, and knowing them helps you keep your people. Refilling positions takes time and money: Gallup estimates that replacing a frontline employee costs about 40% of their salary, and replacing a leader or manager about 200%.
If an employee leaves because they feel unfulfilled, underappreciated or burned out, their productivity may drop before they go. It can stay low while a new hire learns the ropes over their first few weeks or months. And if you have to let someone go, the cost of replacing them may also include a severance package.
Jobs with high turnover rates
In LinkedIn’s data, HR had the highest turnover rate of the job functions it compared. LinkedIn’s analysts also pointed to marketing as a function that can be more vulnerable to changes in a company’s business or market. At the other end, administration had the lowest turnover.
LinkedIn’s authors suggest a pattern: functions with low turnover tend to work with fixed systems like budgets and regulations, while those with high turnover tend to be more consultative and interpersonal. Authors Greg Lewis and Joseph Soroñgon also note that “Recent years have been particularly volatile for talent professionals, with demand for recruiters seesawing from a precipitous fall to a sustained spike.” Making work environments less volatile may help bring turnover down.
Preventing high turnover starts with hiring
If you already have a team of great workers, you’ll want to keep them. Our guide to employee retention has ideas for that. But retention doesn’t start once people are hired. It starts in the hiring process, and much of it is decided before day one.
That means hiring for attitude and potential, not only skills. Skills can be taught. Whether someone fits the role and the environment is much harder to change after they start.
Workwolf® sources candidates, filters them with AI, phone screens them with its recruiters and books the best fits into your calendar, so you only meet the finalists and make the hire. Workwolf® runs on its own AI engine, Packfinder. It screens and ranks every applicant against the profile of each client’s top performers, and it gets more precise with every placement.
Book a call to see how it would work for your roles, or run your numbers in our hiring ROI calculator.
