Managing the juggle of focusing on company kudos when it comes to workforce turnover

Staff moving on from your company is a given. There is rarely, these days, a scenario in which all members of staff stay with a company from the start of their career to the end. And that movement of staff, the flow of people between recruitment and departure, is all part of the complex dance that is retention for HR and your HR policies.

It might feel obvious that some companies will have a certain level of kudos which means people will want to join them, and want to stay.

However, new research has shown that’s not always the case, and it raises questions around the more in-depth issues of retention, and when it’s ok for staff to move on, and when you need to try harder to keep them in your company.

Resume.io has listed companies where people are keen to stay but also keen to leave. And some of the big names might come as a surprise. In the US, the top three where employees don’t want to stay are Apple, Amazon and Meta.

In the UK, the top three are IHG Hotels and Resorts, Nat West Group and WPP, the ‘creative transformation company’.

Conversely, UK workers are keen to stay with Bunzl (a distribution and services group), Noble and IMI. You might not have heard of those – and it is an interesting element to the questions this research raises.

Tina Rahman, Founder of HR Habitat, which provides HR for SMEs, says: “Retention is the ability to keep talent in the business. It is the next step after recruitment - what can the business do to remain an attractive employer that prevents employees leaving for better employers? Businesses should think about what their staff want as part of their development or benefits package that keep great talent engaged with the business. Bad retention rates effect the business reputation as the data will show employees leave because they are dissatisfied. At HR Habitat we suggest running annual employee surveys to see what employees want as part of their package, also to conduct competitor research to determine the offering of those in the same industry.

Is the ‘big name kudos’ always the thing that employees want and stay for?

Firstly, let’s think about those big names. If you work in recruitment in a company that is a ‘name’ in the industry, you might fear (or experience) people applying for jobs because of that CV kudos. They get the job, work with you for a couple of years then off they go with your company name on their CV. It can probably feel a bit like you’re being used.

They won’t stay forever just because of a name, and the list in this research shows that the big names aren’t always the long term relationships that staff perceive them to be.