Dive Brief:
- Amid widespread concerns over staff retention, quit rates are especially high among application and software engineers, business systems analysts, project managers and data engineers, according to a report from PRO Unlimited released last week.
- Across all contingent workers — individuals hired for a short period of time or on a project basis — attrition levels are also high. Over half of contingent workers surveyed for the report who ended their assignments early did so within the first two months. One in three also quit within the first month.
- To combat this, PRO Unlimited recommended better communication around DEI and building trust. Employer reputation matters, too. Companies with good reviews on sites like Glassdoor have contractors that are more likely to stay on for the length of their assignments, the research found.
Dive Insight:
With IT skills in high demand, workers are leveraging market conditions to find better pay and positions.
Across corporate functions, IT workers have the lowest intent to stay, according to the Gartner Global Labor Market Survey polled 18,000 global employees, including 1,755 IT workers.
In the wake of labor shortages prompted by the pandemic, employers began turning to contingent workers in ways they hadn’t previously, experts told HR Dive.
While employers typically turn to contingent workers to quickly fill gaps amid workforce uncertainty, the PRO Unlimited report suggested retention may be a concern among this cohort, potentially threatening those benefits.
While the report focused on contingent workers, retention has become a concern for talent of all types — and employees may expect something different than employers believe they need to provide.
While employers in a PwC survey from August claimed to offer “company purpose and values” and “company leadership and culture” as top benefits for retention, employees said they wanted schedule flexibility, expanded benefits and improved compensation.
But as the report suggested, building trust with employees may be another way to improve retention.
Employers that focus on equity, including equity outside the organization, may see an improved culture as a result, experts previously told HR Dive. Development opportunities may also prompt employees to stick around, particularly younger workers.
Notably, young workers may be another hot spot of retention issues, with 60% of Gen-Z and 59% of younger millennials surveyed actively looking for a new job, according to a Lattice report released this month. Mentorship as well as DEI reportedly are key to this generation of workers.
