Revealed - staff turnover rates at leading estate agencies

Many years ago at a countrywide subsidiary in the South East our annual staff turnover was over 95%...

Based on my own experience I would be very surprised if Chancellors average was really 3 years...frankly 3 months would be more likely

Hard to know how accurate these figures are but if correct must be a reflection of staff satisfaction. What I know from personal experience is that quality staff who are well rewarded, recognised and managed stay a lot longer than the reverse, obviously.

• Christopher Watkin
• 13 April 2021 21:49 PM

Simon - the stats come from Linkedin. When someones leaves a firms, you tell Linkedin and it collates how long you have been at the firm.Now obviously this wont record people who dont use Linkedin.. yet its good starting place. If you want - call me and I will show you where they are. For example, Choices is down as a median tenure of job at 3.6 years

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Interesting but lots of unknown factors and averages are not always a useful measure.

For example if an agency has strong management processes there may be a higher turnover particularly amongst those who are recruited without previous sector experience and during probationary periods.

This could be seen as healthy as it would show only those that develop and perform stay. This would bring down the average but it could be that those who grow and develop are there for years whilst the weak and unsuitable churn.

A company could actually have a strong retention rate but a few particular positions have changed more regularly - this would bring down the average but not be a reflection on the organisation overall.

Interesting that some of the more successful organisations (Connells in particular) are at the lower end of the longevity numbers - they are possibly more demanding and set higher standards. Time is not a healer of poor performance and are therefore possibly less likely to keep “dead wood”

An interesting post but I wouldn’t draw any conclusions about the quality or otherwise of a business from this measure alone.

Hi Chris, interesting statistics, with far more longevity overall than I was expecting. I'm intrigued to know how you obtained these figures, surely not from the companies themselves?

• Christopher Watkin
• 13 April 2021 21:50 PM

AH .. the stats come from Linkedin. Go to a firm .. then click on Insights and Linkedin collates how long you have been at the firm.Now obviously this wont record people who dont use Linkedin.. yet its good starting place. If you want - call me and I will show you where they are on O795O147572

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This will be based on all staff, so long serving senior management and administration staff will boost the average. If it was based purely on office based/customer facing staff then I'm certain it would be less. I was at a sequence meeting once where the staff were asked to introduce themselves and say how long they'd been with the company - please bear in mind this was for a new product the company was launching, not training for new staff. 20 people there, longest serving was an administrator with 10+ years. The median average of the rest was 9 months. As The Daily Mash headline once put it, "Box of Green Tea in office cupboard now longest serving member of staff"

When I worked there, John D Wood, before it was ingested into core countrywide, and with Peter Young at the helm, Sales department had a turnover rate of 10% per annum. Never seen anything like it before or since. No particular point to make, #justsaying