HR professionals recorded the highest turnover rate across all industries in the last three years, LinkedIn reports. The company’s latest global behavioral data said in the past year alone global HR saw a turnover rate of almost 15%. That’s higher than all but two other functions — research, at 13.1% and product management at 13%. The overall turnover rate was 11%.
LinkedIn’s analysis defines turnover (or attrition) as the number of professionals who departed a company in the past year, divided by the average number of employees during the same period.
#HR professionals recorded the highest turnover rate across all industries over the last three years, @LinkedIn says. #HRTech Click To TweetLinkedIn said more HR professionals are leaving their jobs because they have an inside perspective on how their companies treat employees and want to “step away from a dysfunctional company culture.”
“It’s a bit counterintuitive that HR professionals — the people most concerned with retention and turnover — are also the most likely to leave,” said LinkedIn Content Marketing Manager Greg Lewis. The report’s authors observed that HR and marketing jobs tend to be more volatile or vulnerable to changes in a company’s business model or market during, for instance, a hiring freeze or even during a major marketing campaign.
Roles with the Highest and Lowest Turnover Rates
In the months between July 2021 and June 2022, HR, accounted for the highest turnover rate across all functions on LinkedIn’s global network — 14.6%. Other roles with high turnover include research (13.1%), product management (13%), marketing (12.9%) and consulting (11.7%). Engineering, with a turnover rate of 11.5%, narrowly missed the cut off for industries with the highest turnover.
The turnover rates for sales and IT roles were nearly the same as the overall average of 10.6% — with 10.8% turnover for sales and 10.6% for IT jobs. LinkedIn speculates that demand for such professionals is contributing to the comparatively high turnover.
On the other hand, administrative jobs account for the lowest turnover rate during the period, accounting for 7.8% of turnover. It’s followed by operations (8.8%), accounting (9.4%), business development (9.5%) and finance (10%).
The average rate for all roles stood at 10.6%, LinkedIn said. IT roles showed an average of 10.6%
“Since engineering, sales and IT candidates are the most sought after, that also means there are more opportunities for them to leave for greener pastures,” the report said. “Interestingly, these low turnover functions deal more with rigid institutional systems: budgets, regulations, business cycles, etc.”
To take action on the report’s data, LinkedIn said it’s far more important for employers to know the specific turnover rates within their organization. It also pointed out that its turnover estimates may be below actual turnover because of a possible lag between the time someone leaves a company and when they update their LinkedIn profile to reflect that departure.
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