Fast Quitting in the UK

Traditionally, UK employers have wanted new hires to stick around for at least a few years. Late last decade, the average tenure of a UK employee was five years. But the job market keeps shifting—fast.

According to a new survey, more than half (53%) of UK workers report quitting their job within the first six months. Respondents blamed their departure on “a belief that the position is completely different to how it was advertised.” That’s known as “shift shock." But experts say that there appears to be a lot more to the “fast quitting” movement. Indeed, the survey found that people also cited factors like bad management (52% ), a toxic workplace (20%), and unrealistically high employer expectations (75%).

Whatever the reason, experts say all this quitting is surprising, given the state of the job market. Unemployment in the UK is now at 4.2%, giving workers few reasons to bolt. Yet even so, it appears firms, in their rush to fill positions, are misrepresenting them to new hires. In some cases, managers may be presenting only the most appealing parts of the role, says Ben Angold, EMEA lead for Korn Ferry, RPO. “That results in a gap between what’s being sold and reality,” he says. “That’s a poor process at the front end.”

As a rule, hiring managers don’t get the training they need to perform a suitable recruitment interview, says Matthew Atkinson, Korn Ferry associate client partner and leader of the Assessment and Succession practice in the UK and Ireland. “So they lean on building rapport,” he says. “They need to engage in investigative inquiry during the interview.”

HR experts have long known that rapid turnover is costly; some estimates say finding a new employee can cost one-half to twice the annual salary assigned to the job. But technology may be getting in the way of effective hiring, with firms relying first on AI to filter applications, then on Zoom for interviews. Last year, 90% of remote workers were hired via videoconferencing apps such as Zoom, which experts say has limitations for both the candidate and the hiring managers. “I’d be interested to see how many people met in physical environments versus how many were screened over a phone or a video,” Angold says. “Just to get a feel of the culture in the workplace is to get some sense of what you can expect in a potential new job."

In response, smart firms should increase the number of interviews in the hiring process, says Rory Singleton, senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial Market practice. “It can feel like a death by a thousand meetings, but it is also an opportunity to evaluate the candidates more thoroughly.” That includes meeting all the key stakeholders. This approach also enables the candidate to get a better sense of whether they and the company are a good fit.

Transparency helps, too. One hiring executive Singleton knows decided to have the candidate meet with the incumbent—who was unhappy with the job. The idea was for the potential employee to get an honest assessment of the role. “It built trust with the hiring manager because of the transparency,” he says. “It gave the candidate, who had doubts about the corporate culture, the ability to assess the culture more accurately.” In the end, the candidate was hired.

Angold puts it this way: “Anything that lets the candidate walk in the shoes before taking the job is going to help reduce that early-quitting phenomenon. It won’t wholly solve it, but it will help.”

But reducing the number of fast quitters isn’t a hopeless case. That’s because small elements of improvement can quickly add up over time. “You can make incremental progress because we are human,” Angold says. 

Learn more about Korn Ferry's Talent Recruitment capabilities.

Read more This Week in Leadership articles