How to Retain Your Employees



Skill Your Employee to Stop Churn

Jun 2008  Print

A 2008 survey by the Australian Institute of Management (AIM), found that medium and large sized organisations had employee turnover rate of 13.3 per cent, up from 12.6 per cent in 2007.

For an organisation with 100 employees, that’s equivalent to losing more than 13 employees every year.

There is a strong relationship between the performance outcomes of employees and job satisfaction: if employees don’t have the right skills to fulfill the job, their job satisfaction will be low and retention rates will rise.

Simply put, the more you invest in skilling up your employees, the greater the chance you have of retaining and engaging them.

By partnering with DDLS, UNSW is one organisation that has beaten the benchmarks on retention rates.

UNSW Improves Employee Retention with Tailored Training

University of New South Wales (UNSW) has close to 46,000 employees and students and more than 900 undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

With such a massive demand on the university’s resources, its information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure needed top quality technicians to keep operations running efficiently.

UNSW’s Infrastructure Services and Support (ISS) team engaged with Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS) to ensure employee had the skills they needed to maintain excellent standards and to enable management to better plan employee training.

With tailored technical and process training provided by DDLS, the ISS team boosted its employee retention rate to double the industry average.

Whereas the ICT industry’s average length of stay is 18 months, employees within the University’s ISS team now stay for three years.

Plan for Retention Success with your Training Provider

One of the biggest benefits for Greg Sawyer, Manager of UNSW’s ISS team, is the breadth of services offered by DDLS.

While the training provider is able to offer all of the services needed for the UNSW ISS team, the benefits really weigh in when he needs to manage his team’s training strategy.

Greg invests 10 percent of employee salaries into training. This translates into one to two courses per year, per employee, enabling employees to keep up to date with their certifications and adding value to their careers.

“Due to our work environment, we tend to keep employees significantly longer,” said Greg. “Their feedback has been great – they have been impressed with DDLS’ training facilities and standards. Quite simply, the right training helps us keep our employees.”

Recognising this link between the right skills plan and employee retention may help your business attract and retain employees.

To discuss your business’ skills plan, you can contact DDLS on 13 12 01.