What are the main reasons for employee resignation?

A large number of employees are currently resigning from the UK workforce. A study showed that managers are finding it 60% harder to recruit for job roles than before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 9 in 10 say that their business now has vacancies as a result of staff resigning. One of the biggest reasons for staff resignation includes burnout. In order to improve employee retention, you should firstly have an idea of why the majority of employees that leave their company do so. Apart from burnout, some other top reasons for employee resignation are:

• lack of professional growth
• few training opportunities
• lack of clear business strategy or company direction
• better opportunities for professional growth arising at another company
• lack of benefits and poor salary.

You can see that many of the reasons that employees resign comes down one way or another to a lack of opportunities for professional growth and gaining new skills. As the UK jobs market is continuously growing, there are many opportunities for employees to look for jobs elsewhere. What’s more, implementing professional development can also help keep your business relevant since you will be training your employees to meet the changing demands of your industry. During the pandemic, many companies who had to reduce their staff numbers are now recruiting and looking to grow. This means that even after the initial recruitment process, you still have to work to convince your employees that your workplace provides the best career opportunities for them in their area. You can do this by offering perks and a competitive salary, or through offering professional growth opportunities.

Professional development opportunities and how you can implement them

Professional development should be tailored to the needs of your employees. They are more likely to stay with your company if they feel valued for their individual contributions. Therefore, it is good to find out what drives your employees, why they are working for you, and what their career plans are over the next four years. This can involve holding one-on-one meetings with your employees on a quarterly or monthly basis. During this meeting, you can discuss your professional development strategies with them, and find out what interests them the most. Ideas for professional development include:

Training during the onboarding process

Although your new recruits may have the right skills and experience meaning that it will be easy for them to fit into your pre-existing workflows, you should ideally guide them through your company processes. This can help them to feel more confident with achieving tasks from day one. You can recap any training that they have received with them later in the year.

Offering mentorship, coaching and buddy schemes

You can offer mentorship, coaching and buddy schemes to your employees depending on the kind of training or support that they need to receive. Mentorship, coaching and buddy schemes have slightly different definitions. You might offer a buddy service during the onboarding process to new employees, to help them become better acquainted with the rest of their team or another member of staff. Coaching is a great way to help build professional development in employees, and you may offer coaching to promising employees who are looking to develop their skill set to meet new industry requirements or move into a more senior role. Coaching requires giving more hands-on support to employees, usually from a qualified professional. Therefore, you should decide when it is most appropriate to run each scheme and which employees will benefit from it the most. Mentorship schemes involve a senior member of staff teaching or guiding another employee through training or new tasks. This is a great way to foster strong relationships within your team and is more cost-effective than employing a professional from outside your company.

Learning to code

If your employees work in the tech industry, it is a good idea to offer them coding training. Even if they are already experienced coders, giving them the opportunity to brush up on old skills as well as learn popular programmes will be of great value to your business in the long term. Helping your employees to prepare for the transition to Web3 will also help your team stay relevant and ahead of changing trends in your industry.

Yoga and wellbeing courses

You can help improve your employee’s well-being by offering yoga or other well-being courses during lunch breaks or after work. Not only does yoga have amazing health benefits that can improve your employee’s mood and morale. It also gives them something new to work towards. Yoga courses with a qualified instructor can teach employees the importance of how a little practice over time is key to learning and even mastering a new skill.

Gamification of training courses

Training games are a great side addition to your training programmes for employees. They can help consolidate what your employees have learned previously and can help them to remember new information. You can also use training games and quizzes to track individual performance, and use this to offer your employees more personalised development opportunities that cater to their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Performance feedback

You can offer performance feedback during appraisals or an annual performance review, but also throughout the rest of the year as well. What motivates your employees will be fluid and will likely change during the year. Each performance review gives you a snapshot of how your employee is feeling about their role in that moment. This means you can find out what is concerning your employees with regards to their own performance, as well as their changing motivations. It also means that you can offer praise to keep them motivated and feeling valued, as well as offer personalised training depending on their needs.

You can use this opportunity to also follow up any training courses that your employees have completed through the year and find out how effective they have been. You can then improve on future training opportunities by taking onboard employee feedback on their effectiveness. Your employees may have differing opinions on what makes a successful training programme, so in the future you may want to offer bespoke training depending on their preferred learning styles.

Offer industry speaker talks and lectures

You can provide employees with on-site talks regarding industry-relevant subjects or give them the opportunity to watch online lectures. They may also subscribe to learning apps which run online classes and lectures that they can follow as part of a course.

Find out what inspires your employees to actively participate

During training sessions, your employees will most likely have different learning and engagement styles. Some employees will be more confident speakers and will take a natural leadership role on certain tasks. Others may be more thoughtful, or learn at a slower pace. It is a good idea to ask your employees their opinions on your training courses, so that you can find out whether they feel as if they are keeping up, or if there are any areas where they could use some additional support.

In order to make this process easier on an ongoing basis, track your employee’s progress using an app or training games that record their results. This might be easier in certain industries such as in information technology, because you can track progress using quizzes. Here, there is often a clear right or wrong answer. However, if you are training employees in new skills like conflict management or soft skills, you might want to run a seminar on this so that your employees can discuss different strategies with each other. This can be a good social or bonding event as well, which in turn can improve staff morale.

Training certification

It can be useful to offer your employees certified training opportunities, so that they have evidence of having completed your courses. You might offer them training in fire safety, blogging, building reports or culinary skills courses. This not only demonstrates how they are valued by your company, but may also be useful for their own career progression within your business. It can help visibly demonstrate that these employees are able to complete certain tasks during internal recruiting processes. Therefore, certified training can make internal recruiting more straightforward as you can track evidence of career progression in certain employees. Further reading: Team-Building Tips and Activities to Boost Employee Morale and Engagement How to Reduce Employee Turnover How to Communicate a Pay Raise