The war for talent is real. Across South Africa’s industry sectors, employers are battling to attract and retain talented staff and employee turnover rates have not declined. That’s despite high unemployment rates and the financial challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our April 2021 Salary and Wage Movement Survey found that resignations account for 34.7% of the overall labour turnover followed by ‘non-renewal of contract’ at 22.8%.

The recruitment process can be costly and time-consuming – and in the Covid-19 environment certain organisations have hiring freezes, which mean that the remaining employees are left to carry the burden of the additional work. That, in turn, can create issues around motivation and engagement. 

Why do employees leave?

Many factors contribute to employees’ decision to leave an employer. Remuneration is always on the radar, and was listed among the top three in recent engagement surveys we ran in the mining, financial services and project engineering sectors. But remuneration may not be the only factor, nor is it the only solution to retaining talented employees. After all, if an employee stays for money, they’ll leave for money.

Employer culture is another factor, which is why it is such a crucial part of the employee value proposition. Although an employer may have a set of organisational values, employees will often say in surveys that none of the leadership is walking their talk. Employees want to be proud of the organisation they work for.

Poor leadership in general also comes into play. One way to assess the quality of your leadership is by looking at the attrition rate in the various skills categories. It’s a particular challenge now, since leaders and managers are not necessarily equipped to manage remote workers.

The following table lists six factors that affect employees’ decision to resign and how much weight they attach to each.

Engagement issues most raised by employees per industry

Source: Remchannel Snap Survey Trends

Ways to improve your staff retention

In order to retain talented employees, it is therefore important to understand why you are losing them. In Remchannel’s Financial Services user group, 90% of organisations indicated that they conduct regular employee engagement surveys. They are a good barometer of the health of a workforce. Unfortunately, engagement surveys don’t necessarily result in action from corporate South Africa. If you conduct engagement surveys and your employees’ concerns are not heard, and changes are not made based on their feedback, participation will decrease along with motivation levels.

While most organisations conduct exit interviews, they are not always a true indication of why the employee is leaving. Employees tend to cite better opportunities as their reason for resigning, but that often is the result and not the cause, as employees often become more susceptible to new opportunities only once they have already disengaged.

Exit interviews and employee surveys will enable you to identify the issues that you may not be aware of in your organisation – but only if you allow for frank and anonymous feedback from employees. If something is (or was) bugging them, they might not state it if they are not assured that their feedback will be anonymous. The only way to get employees to be truthful in feedback sessions is by building trust in your organisation. If you have trust, they will be quite vocal; and if they see that change is being affected, they will most certainly contribute positively.

Leadership should also be conscious that, when they look at the results of their employee engagement surveys, they should not see them as a reflection on them as individuals, but rather as part of a continuous improvement process. Ask yourself: What can we do differently? How can we do it differently? Then use that to prevent your staff walking away with all the institutional knowledge they’ve gained over the years, and taking it over the road to your competitors.

As the table further illustrates, what works in one industry in terms of the weighting allocated to various factors will not necessarily work in another. Knowing what employees in your specific business value, will give your HR the insight needed to develop a more compelling employee value proposition to attract and retain staff now and after the pandemic.

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