Howden Employee Benefits and Wellbeing are encouraging Human Resources (HR) experts to instigate a staff retention drive in 2022.
A recent survey by Howden, where 160 senior HR professionals were polled, showed that 81 per cent of employers said there were too few - at 68 per cent - of suitable applicants for vacancies, with 13 per cent saying they had no candidates at all.
Only 12 per cent of employers were not currently experiencing any recruitment challenges, but 36 per cent of employer respondents told Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing researchers that they expected a vacant position to remain unfilled for between three and six months - with 10 per cent experiencing wait times of up to nine months.
The HR respondents also said that the effects of the delays in new appointments were aggravated by the length of time it took a new worker to achieve their full level of output. Only 7 per cent of employers expect a new employee to reach their peak output in the first three months of employment; another 56 per cent of respondents suggest six to twelve months and 2 per cent consider that it would take a year or more for maximum output to be achieved.
Steve Herbert - Head of Benefits Strategy at Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing - said:
“A retention drive should be a high priority for many more businesses this year. The focus of the exercise should be to highlight the uncertainties of leaving for a new job elsewhere, whilst also strongly reminding employees of the benefits of continuing in their current employment.
In particular, we would encourage employers to really promote those important – but so often overlooked or poorly communicated – employee benefits offerings. Employer-funded benefits such as Group Life Assurance, Group Income Protection, and Group Private Medical Insurance are now even more important following a worldwide health crisis.
It follows that workers may be far less inclined to change employers once they better understand that such a move may result in a break in the cover provided, or even the loss of these valuable protections altogether.”
Steve Herbert went on to suggest that retaining existing talent should be focussed upon by employers in 2022, but disappointingly the Howden survey revealed that only 22 per cent of employers were currently looking to implement any form of retention drive.
