Companies face growing staff turnover problem

HIGH staff turnover - the scourge of labour-intensive businesses in the boom years of the late 1980s - has returned to plague British companies. More than a third of organisations report that employee turnover and the costly problems associated with it have got considerably worse over the past three years.

In a survey conducted by Reed Personnel Services, six out of 10 employers said staff retention was now one of their main concerns. In the study of 419 employers it was found that staff turnover throughout all sectors was running at 13 per cent - that means 13 per cent of employees leave every year and have to be replaced - but in the retail sector it has reached a high of 26 per cent. In the service sector the figure was 14 per cent, 11 per cent in distribution and 9 per cent in manufacturing, the public sector and charities.