Case study: Why the new joiners didn't want to stay

The Situation
A major global organisation found it was losing highly educated and highly trained new joiners after only 1-2 years of service. An internal investigation estimated the overall cost of such losses as running into hundreds of thousands of pounds for each leaver. Solutions based around reward and remuneration had pushed costs up further without proving effective.

The Project
A consultant team tracked the careers of a number of such joiners from application to exit interview, interviewed all of the then-current cohort and a wide cross section of senior managers and other staff throughout the business.

The data was analysed qualitatively rather than statistically and clear trends emerged around expectations, lack of sufficiently challenging work, and poor management and development.
The project also showed up that individual managers had a strong tendency to recruit people with a distinct preference for individual achievement and then place them in an environment where good team skills were a pre-requisite for success.

The Result
The company began by changing the way it represented itself in the recruitment market, to attract more discerning candidates. Recruitment procedures were changed to incorporate Behavioural Event Interviewing in the selection process and to set realistic expectations for successful candidates. Induction and development programmes were revised to provide challenges appropriate to the calibre of candidates and a mentoring programme put in place to guide new joiners over their first 18 months.

Leaver rates dropped from 7 out of 12 to zero following the introduction of the new measures. The client sponsor declared it: "Probably the most significant and cost effective project we have ever seen".