Construction and property industry has strong staff tenure

The construction and property industry has the second highest tenure in the UK, with employees remaining with a company for 4.4 years on average according to a new study into employee retention.

The ‘Employee Retention Report’, compiled by equity management platform, Vestd, analysed a total dataset of 398,006 employees from 1,400 UK companies on LinkedIn to determine the average median employee tenure across 14 industries.

Narrowly trailing behind the manufacturing industry, which had an average tenure of 5.3 years, the property and construction industry significantly outperforms the UK average of 3.7 years across all sectors analysed.

The findings come after a report found that 30% of UK employees leave to join another organisation every year, while Google trends data revealed over 7,000 web searches for ‘letter of resignation’ in the past month alone.

According to CIPD data, older demographic groups typically move less frequently between jobs, which could be observed in the construction sector, where 64.8% of workers are aged over 41, and one in six is aged 60 or over,

In contrast, marketing had the lowest tenure with employees staying an average of 2.8 years at a company, closely followed by the hospitality industry with three years.

The data also revealed that the IT industry had the third-lowest tenure (3.1), with employees more likely to stay in startups and SMEs (3.3) compared to an enterprise-size business (2.8).

Higher turnover rates

In addition, startup and SME companies had on average lower tenure than enterprise companies, likely because startups offer less stability, with around 60% failing in their first three years of business.

Commenting on the findings, Ifty Nasir, CEO of Vestd, said: “Employee tenure is a key indicator of job satisfaction and company culture. Our findings demonstrate that, while it is natural to see movement between companies, industries like marketing, hospitality, and IT are struggling to effectively retain staff for long periods of time, leading to higher turnover rates and disrupted workplaces.  

“But with financial stability and well-being becoming a key priority for employees across all industries, offering robust packages that respond to these shifting needs has become a powerful incentive to not only retain current staff, but attract new talent.

“Reward-based incentives, such as employee share schemes or enterprise management incentives (EMI schemes), provide employees with a sense of ownership within their workplace, whatever their role. It’s also a powerful incentive for staff to work their way up the ranks, decreasing employee turnover in the long-term while encouraging a vested interest in the success of the company.”