Thinking About Churn
Have you heard enough about churn yet? If not, I’ve been collecting some stats you might find interesting.
The economy is improving and many people have been sitting on their hands waiting until they feel it is safe to make a job change. Almost everyone you ask expects that voluntary employee turnover will jump in the second half of this year. Here are a few of the loudest voices:
Employee turnover will increase by 50% in 2010 (ERE.net)
1 in 5 workers plan to leave their current job in 2010 (Careerbuilder)
90% of employed executives will take a recruiters phone call (ExecuNet)
57% if IT professionals said they are unsatisfied and want a new job. 70% indicated that they expect mass turnover in their IT departments once the job market recovers (Dice.com)
The Dice.com survey is particularly revealing. They interviewed several hundred IT professionals in each study last fall. Their report states that recruiters are expecting a “mass exodus” of technology professionals seeking new opportunities. They believe that many tech professionals migrated towards stable blue-chip companies when the economy first started to weaken. These are not necessarily the types of companies these people prefer to work in, so now that things are looking up, many will want to return to the smaller and more entrepreneurial companies they came from.
Our own survey of HR leaders (download here) found that churn is one of the biggest concerns facing recruiters in 2010.
There are certainly a lot of things you can do to help improve employee satisfaction, but recruiters still need to be prepared to respond quickly when an important role in the company suddenly needs to be filled. The challenge for companies is that the best people will not be on the market long, and they probably will do most of their networking with peers and colleagues in social media. This means their neatly formatted and updates resume won’t ever appear on the job sites.
We are working with HR executives to help them prepare for a spike in turnover. By creating and distributing the content that helps shape their employment brand and by using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to build a following around the company, we are cultivating a network of talented industry professionals who can help shorten any search and save you from having to rely on advertising to the active job market at that time.
