In the March 2019 Snapshot Survey, we asked contractors all about employee retention. Here’s one survey question and its results from the summary report, which is now available in its entirety to EGIA members.
Question: How long has the average technician been employed at your company?
Turnover can be disastrous for a business owner, with an estimated cost of 200% of a year’s salary for highly-skilled positions. So once you’ve acquired new talent, it’s even more vital to keep them onboard. According to the contractors who took our survey, the most common term-of-employment of technicians (37%) is between two and four years. It’s encouraging to see that nearly half (47%) of reported technicians have been employed four or more years. Contractors also communicated similar employment durations for office workers, with the majority having worked for their respective companies for two to four years. Here’s what an HVAC contractor from Texas answered: “We pay 75% of employee health insurance cost, we provide life insurance, we offer optional long-term disability and dental. We have a 401k where we match up to 10%. We seem to lose employees to companies with less or no benefits but higher pay. It seems that employees are not interested in long term benefits but in more cash in their pockets immediately.”
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For a deep dive into recruiting and retaining talent, and other related concepts, access training materials, recommendations and education pieces in the Contracting Best Practices Library, available in your EGIA Member Dashboard.