Over a third of organisations have improved their starting salaries to recruit staff but the number of organisations that have increased pay to retain staff has dropped, according to the 2003 CIPD recruitment and retention survey.
Training and development remains the biggest retention tool for organisations (58%) and the use of coaching and mentoring systems has increased sharply.
Other key findings include:
- Recruiters are now more prepared to train new recruits and drop the level of experience required. The number of organisations that appoint people with potential but who do not currently satisfy the requirements has grown to 73%.
- Public service organisations put greater emphasis on work-life balance measures to retain staff.
- 74% of organisations monitor their findings from exit interviews and 59% monitor staff opinions through attitude surveys. However, only 28% monitor the financial cost of replacing leavers.
- As many as 97% of organisations prefer face-to-face interviews to select candidates, but telephone interviewing has increased considerably.
- Over 70% of organisations now advertise their vacancies on their own websites – compared to just over half last year. Just under 10% advertise on a job board.
- Half of those surveyed provide application forms by e-mail or via their websites, to be returned in hard copy, and a third accept completed application forms by e-mail.
