When it comes to leaving their employer, U.S. workers aren’t balking: the Work Institute (an employee retention consulting firm) in May 2018 predicted that one in four workers (or 42 million people) would opt to leave their employers that year.
Why? Mostly because workers can: a growing economy and a very low unemployment rate provide employees options when they are unhappy at work and they definitely are choosing to exercise that option.
Southern California Isn’t Immune to Employee Turnover
Workers also are leaving Los Angeles’ area businesses at a quick clip. The Los Angeles Metro Region saw 16 percent employee turnover (which was lower than the overall turnover rate in the U.S, at 19 percent). This is much higher than the 10 percent turnover rate that’s considered “good.”
However, these figures are from 2016, when the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in LA County and 3.6 percent in Orange County.
And now? Unemployment throughout LA County in June 2019 was 4.5 percent, while Orange County’s was 3 percent that month and so we feel it’s safe to say that turnover also has increased since 2016, especially considering low unemployment has been with us for several years now: workers feel confident employers will be vying for their attention.
Who Leaves The Most?
Younger workers tend to quit more often than older workers. This makes sense, of course because they are in career exploration mode.
Job hopping – leaving employer after employer once they’ve worked there a year or 18 months or so – is common among younger workers as they look to either find the career and/or industry they enjoy. Job hopping does tend to stop, however, as young workers see age 30 moving closer.
When Do Employees Leave?
No surprise here: a good portion (30 percent) of workers leave within 90 days of starting a new job. This holds true for all age groups. The main reason is disappointment: the worker found that the job was a poor fit and decided to leave sooner rather than later. A company’s culture as well as a really bad work experience also are reasons employees leave within a mere three months.
What Can You Do to Combat Such Quick Attrition?
Understand that job candidates have plenty of options today. Particularly in a low-unemployment region such as Southern California, many of your candidates might be weighing multiple offers and they simply won’t put up with a poor fit – because they don’t have to!
This is why it’s critical that you take your interview and onboarding processes extremely seriously. You need to dig and understand what success means to a candidate and then work hard to ensure you set them up for success from the beginning: when they first see your job posting to their first few weeks in your employ.
Employee retention in Southern California is such an important issue that we are going to discuss it in blog posts over the next few months. Our next retention post – to publish Tuesday, September 17 – will continue the discussion on why employees leave.
Until then, if you need to replace a departing employee sooner than you expected and need a substitute ASAP, contact the Helpmates office nearest you. We will quickly find someone to come in while you look for a permanent replacement. But don’t be surprised if the terrific person we bring in turns out to become that permanent placement: many of our clients end up hiring our temporary associates as they work on assignment for them.
Take a look at our industry capabilities and give us a call.
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