There has been a significant rise in the number of organisations struggling to retain their staff over the past year, with recruitment difficulties persisting, according to a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The CIPD’s annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover Survey of 905 employers found that almost eight in 10 struggled to hang on to their staff in 2006, compared with nearly seven in 10 in 2005.
But this research also shows that recruiting from overseas, targeting migrant workers, training existing staff and better use of employer brand will help UK employers tackle these problems.
Nicola Monson, author of the report, said: “Employers will continue to struggle to find suitable candidates and keep staff turnover under control if their approach to recruitment and retention fails to take account of both business and employee needs.
“Only half of employers currently have a formal resourcing strategy, which suggests many are not planning for the future skills requirements of their organisation. This is particularly worrying given that specialist skills and required experience is still in such short supply.”
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Key reasons for recruitment difficulties are lack of necessary specialist skills (65%), followed by higher pay expectations (46%) and insufficient experience (37%).
Organisations are continuing to look beyond the UK to fill vacancies – 14% are targeting migrant workers from EU accession states. This was seen to have a positive impact on recruitment difficulties by 75% of organisations, compared with just 48% in the 2006 survey.
