Unfriendly Working Environments are to Blame
Employers in the industry might be surprised to learn that they only have five days to impress a new recruit before they decide whether to stay or go. A new study reveals that the majority of construction workers will decide to leave a new job within the first week if it’s not what they expected, and that unfriendly working environments are to blame.
The research comes from CV-Library, the UK’s largest job site, and was conducted amongst a cross-section of over 4,000 UK employees to uncover how quickly they decide if a new role is right, whether or not they’d stick around if they’re unhappy and what influences them to make these decisions. Key findings revealed:
- 4% of recruits in the sector decide whether to stay in a new job within the first week
- Almost half (45.5%) would then proceed to leave the role within one month
- 3 out of 4 construction workers would leave a new role they didn’t like, even if they didn’t have another job to go to
- Employees working in construction are more likely to keep their options open; 7% admit they still actively look at other job opportunities for up to one month after starting a new role, even when they’re happy – this is higher than the national average of 48.4%
It’s clear that, despite accepting a job offer, new employees in the sector aren’t loyal to a company until they are certain that the role is what they expected. The most common reasons as to why a recruit would choose to leave a construction role, include:
- Unfriendly working environments – over half (51.3%) admit this would be the most likely reason as to why they would leave a new job
- Poor work/life balance – 34.8% cite this as another main reason to leave
- Dealing with poor management (33.2%)
- Feeing the role wasn’t as expected (33.2%)
- Lack of opportunities to advance (25.1%)
- Being offered a better opportunity elsewhere (23.5%)
- Inadequate training and feedback (19.3%)
Lee Biggins founder and managing director of CV-library comments: “The recruitment process doesn’t end in the interview room. Time is of the essence when on-boarding a new employee and it’s important that construction businesses understand how critical the first week of employment is. Organisations that are regularly experiencing the loss of new recruits should be taking the opportunity to uncover any flaws in their working environments. Our data shows that there are clear reasons a new recruit would leave, and most of them can be easily corrected.”
Learn more about CV-Library at www.cv-library.co.uk.
