Staff satisfaction is key when it comes to staffing firms retaining their internal staff, and a new report by Staffing Industry Analysts points to three factors that drive internal staff satisfaction: leadership, work environment/culture and future opportunities.
The report found that 43% of internal workers at staffing firms left their previous jobs because of either uninspiring culture or perceived poor leadership.
The report is “North America Internal Staff Survey 2022: Retaining internal staff: what drives satisfaction, why they leave, what you can do.” Here are some of the findings:
Leadership. “Be transparent, be caring/mentoring, make a personal connection with staff, be fair and honest, lead by example, trust the staff, and create a good working environment.”
Work environment/culture. “Staff like friendly co-workers, successfully placing candidates in jobs, connecting with people, and flexibility/autonomy in their work. They least like paperwork, office inefficiency and staff issues, giving bad news to candidates and dealing with other candidate issues, call quotas/cold calls, and poor work/life balance.”
Future opportunities. “The types of career development activities staff most desire are coaching from management, new responsibilities/job challenges, training, development of management skills, learning the staffing industry, team building, and clearly defined career paths.”
“It’s notable that pay and benefits did not score high as a driver of staff satisfaction. For the most part, it’s not about money,” said Jon Osborne, VP of strategic research and author of the report. “Leadership is the top driver. Good leadership has the effect of giving staff confidence in the company, which increases staff satisfaction, and in turn results in higher retention.”
The survey included responses from nearly 18,000 internal workers at staffing firms. The full report is available online to corporate members of Staffing Industry Analysts.