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Reasons Your Top Talent Might Leave This Year

By: Aquent

DATE: January 27, 2021

At the end of 2020, we surveyed more than 2,000 marketing, creative, and digital talent to understand what they truly value. We featured some of these insights in our 2021 Salary Guide, and have outlined the highlights for you here. If there's one thing you take away from this, it's that you're going to need to make some changes in 2021. After the year we've just had, what matters to talent has changed and retention just got a whole lot tougher.

Half of your employees are about to leave

50% of talent are looking to leave in the next 3 to 6 months. This is an enormous cost to any organisation. Our recommendation is that companies focus on retention through initiatives like career conversations and development, succession planning, and identification of high potential talent. Career progression and compensation remain the top two most important factors in choosing their next role. If you engage with your talent early and often, you can mitigate this risk and impact to the organisation.

A new leadership approach is required

It is critical for companies to cultivate management skills such as communication and empathy in order to improve the productivity of their teams as well as retain talent. 44% of talent were less than satisfied with their manager’s leadership during the COVID crisis, and 45% cited poor leadership as the reason they left their last job.

Hybrid work environments will help attract and retain the best Talent

Four out of five talent surveyed said they want to continue working remotely at least some, or all, of the time, up sharply from last year. Employers may see permanent changes to office hours and office space, along with the needs and expectations of talent, such as flexible working hours, better technology, and collaboration tools.

Successful companies are continuously pipelining Talent

Companies are missing the opportunity to build relationships with talent for future needs. 90% of talent surveyed were contacted only for immediate vacancies. Pipelining talent ensures that you have a supply of ready candidates to respond to market opportunities and digital customers’ evolving demands.

For more information on how coronavirus has changed the working world and further insights from our survey of over 2000 talent, download our 2020 Talent Insights report here.