While it may seem to older folk that no one can stay in a job for more than a few months before jumping ship anymore, in fact the construction and property sector turns out to be relatively stable when it comes to employee retention rates.
According to a new study into employee retention, the construction and property industry has the second highest tenure in the UK, even though employees remain with a company for only 4.4 years on average.
The Employee Retention Report, compiled by equity management platform Vestd, analysed a dataset of 398,006 employees from 1,400 UK companies on LinkedIn to determine the average median employee tenure across 14 industries.
Construction and property was behind only the manufacturing industry, which has an average tenure of 5.3 years. The all-industry UK average of is 3.7 years.
According to data from the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, older demographic groups typically move less frequently between jobs, which could be observed in the construction sector, where 64.8% of workers are aged over 41, and one in six is aged 60 or over.
In contrast, marketing had the lowest tenure, with employees staying an average of 2.8 years at a company, closely followed by the hospitality industry with 3.0 years.
Vestd chief executive Ifty Nasir 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.”