According to multiple sources, 2021 saw a significant increase in voluntary staff turnover. Nearly 50% of respondents to a payscale.com survey, for example, reported higher voluntary staff turnover than in previous years, with 76% experiencing significantly more difficulty attracting appropriate talent than they have done previously.
In the technology, financial and insurance sectors particularly, these numbers are higher still. A recent white paper1 based on an in-depth survey, 2022 Work Reimagined, noted that 68% of survey respondents reported an increase in employee turnover in the previous 12 months. Further, 43% of employees polled said that they would likely leave their current employment in the forthcoming year, a significant leap from 7% in 2021.
While pay is always a primary motivator in an employee’s ‘stay or go’ decision, post-pandemic lockdowns another critical factor is the desire (demand) of many employees to work remotely, some or all of the working week, and indeed to work from anywhere in the world that they fancy.
The paper identified Millennial and Gen Z generations working in the technology sector as most likely to be ‘job jumpers’ – citing an astonishing 60%+ attrition rate for these groups – and reinforcing industry predictions (and concerns) about a ‘great resignation’. This demographic also introduced ‘quiet quitting’, the phenomenon whereby employees put in just enough effort to avoid being fired, but nothing beyond that. ‘Quiet quitting’ is focused on maintaining employees’ wellbeing, avoiding burnout, and ensuring that employers don’t ‘exploit’ staff beyond their contractual obligations.
For technologists – and particularly those in the new digital technology segment – an employee-favourable supply and demand dynamic is also in play. It’s an ongoing challenge in the traditional fintech space; the growing burden of regulatory compliance (including onerous operational resilience obligations) falls most heavily on a firm’s technology and infrastructure resources, whether in-house or delivered by third party service providers.
Employee retention (attrition) with respect to these employees is especially challenging, not least because Millennial/Gen Z demographics don’t necessarily share the same sense of employee loyalty as older generations, while at the same time being far more confident about brokering their perceived value and worth to employers.
It’s hard for employers. First, you need to recruit the right people to support your business objectives, itself a lengthy and expensive process. Having found the ‘talent’, you will likely spend a considerable amount onboarding and training them, all the while knowing that there is a very high risk that they may up and leave at any time for a ‘better’ offer.
High turnover in key technology roles also impacts operational efficiency and business revenues. However, your project development schedules and obligations remain, regardless of any disruption in the human resources required to deliver them. (Companies experiencing particularly high employee attrition rates may also experience employee morale challenges from continuous changes within operational teams).
So, what’s the solution? Employers can seek to attract and more importantly, retain talent by continually upping the pay and perks ante in the hope that more money, working hour and location flexibility will keep employees loyal (& productive). This may improve your recruitment odds, but it doesn’t prevent employees from leaving, particularly in a ‘seller’s market’. Another approach might be to require those employees trained at considerable expense to commit to staying with a company for a minimum, fixed term at the risk of having to repay training costs. This could itself be a barrier to recruitment, however, in reality, it’s difficult to enforce (and won’t stop employees leaving).
Brickendon Consulting offers a different approach to keeping your project deliverables on time and on budget. Supporting your business plans, we provide specialist technology resources on a fixed delivery, fixed capacity basis, within an agreed budget.
Enabling highly regulated organisations implement complex change
As a specialist consultancy with large and fast-growing technology teams in Poland and India, we can provide the expertise and specialist resources to support transformation, technology, risk, finance, IT and operational teams and projects.
We work today with 30 of the world’s largest banks, bringing experience and insight in front, middle and back-office operations, as well as highly efficient and effective access to qualified, professional resources enabling you to fill ‘talent gaps’ with respect to specific project and commercial deliverables and as desired, to manage the development and delivery of business-critical projects from start to finish.
We empower you to confirm and assure project progress to plan with stakeholders. You can progress projects with confidence, meeting milestones and working efficiently through to successful implementation without the risk, cost, inconvenience and worry about high staff turnover in your in-house delivery teams.
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