The manufacturing industry has the highest staff tenure in the UK, with employees remaining with a company for an average of 5.3 years, according to a new study into employee retention.
The ‘Employee Retention Report’, compiled by equity management platform, Vestd, analysed a total dataset of 398,006 employees from 1,400 UK companies on LinkedIn to determine the average median employee tenure across 14 industries.
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Across all sectors, the data revealed that employees remain with a company for an average of just 3.7 years in the UK.
This comes after a CIPD report found that 30% of UK employees leave to join another organisation every year, with Google trends data revealing 7,000 web searches for ‘letter of resignation’ in the past month alone.
In the manufacturing industry, the tenure across company sizes is very consistent compared to other industries, with an average of 5.3 years across manufacturing SMEs, 5.2 years for large companies and 5.3 years for enterprise level businesses.
Despite historically high turnover rates, the manufacturing industry has seen a decrease in vacancies since Q2 2023. This comes after 45% of manufacturing companies reportedly increased their investment in well being initiatives in the last year.
Following closely behind the manufacturing sector was the property and construction industry, with employees remaining for an average of 4.4 years.
In contrast, the report revealed the marketing industry had the lowest staff retention, with employees staying an average of 2.8 years at a company, followed by the hospitality industry with three years. This may be due to survey data that found that almost two-thirds of marketers considered a change in role for better financial remuneration.
The data also revealed that the IT industry had the third-lowest tenure (3.1), with employees more likely to stay in startups and SMEs (3.3) compared to an enterprise-size business (2.8).
Commenting on the findings, Ifty Nasir, CEO of Vestd, said: “Employee tenure is a key indicator of job satisfaction and company culture. Our findings demonstrate that, while it is natural to see movement between companies, industries like marketing, hospitality, and IT are struggling to effectively retain staff for long periods of time, leading to higher turnover rates and disrupted workplaces.
“But with financial stability and well-being becoming a key priority for employees across all industries, offering robust packages that respond to these shifting needs has become a powerful incentive to not only retain current staff, but attract new talent.
“Reward-based incentives, such as employee share schemes or enterprise management incentives (EMI schemes), provide employees with a sense of ownership within their workplace, whatever their role. It’s also a powerful incentive for staff to work their way up the ranks, decreasing employee turnover in the long-term while encouraging a vested interest in the success of the company.”
For more information and for the full research, visit: www.vestd.com/blog/employee-retention-report-2024
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