Why Employee Retention Can Be Such A Challenge

The area of construction recruitment should seem to be fairly simple. After all, it’s clear enough what most people in the industry do, so anyone applying for a job and getting it should know what is involved and they have the paperwork telling them the pay rates, hours and so on.

However, none of this apparent simplicity seems to change the reality that in construction, like so many other industries, employee retention levels are often poor.

That’s bad news for everybody; for employers who have to replace people, for the departing workers who find the job wasn’t what they hoped for, and for developers whose projects can be stymied by staff shortages.

It is important to understand why this happens and to act, not least if the problem lies with recruitment agencies that are less than honest with either the employer or recruit, which leads to a poor match between the job and candidate.

According to a survey by LinkedIn earlier this year, 61 percent of workers in the US were planning to quit in 2023, so this is a problem across the economy, a figure rising to 70 percent among Millennials and Generation Z.

Reasons for quitting may sound familiar: Younger workers job-hop more in a tight labor market as they seek out a job they like. Better pay, improved work-life balance and flexible working are all common motivations too.

Over in the UK, a 2017 survey by the Construction Industry Training Board identified common reasons for early leaving as low pay, a lack of career progression and the job not being what they expected. For the majority who left early, construction was not their first-choice career.

This suggests a key for recruitment is to filter candidates more carefully, finding those with a clear commitment to a career in the sector and a clear understanding of what is involved, especially among young workers. That way, the scourge of the millennial or Gen Z job-hopper can be largely avoided.