According to the survey, the most commonly reported reason for employee turnover was promotion outside the organisation. But this is followed by 42% claiming that a lack of career and development opportunities was the motivation for leaving.

The task for most organisations, once they have established the reasons why their employees are leaving, is to take steps to improve their retention initiatives. Understanding who is leaving and when is also crucial in determining a retention strategy. It’s also important to understand that what works for one organisation and their set of challenges won’t necessarily work for another; each case is different.

The most commonly reported retention initiative undertaken by survey respondents is improving employee communication and involvement, with 57% saying that they had made improvements in this area. This is followed by increasing learning and development opportunities (49%), and improving the induction process (45%).

There is no question that competition to recruit talented staff is getting tougher. The high frequency of people moving from employer to employer shows that one HR professional’s retention problem is simply a mirror image of another’s opportunity to recruit, with the turnover rate a useful barometer of the ferocity of competition.

To find out how you can address staff retention concerns, and a host other HR and management issues, visit: www.goodpractice.net.

The full CIPD survey is available at: www.cipd.co.uk.