The fight for a living has broken out: more and more people are changing jobs

The outflow of intellectual workers rose to a historic 19 percent last year. Only in trade did turnover fall, while it rose in services and manufacturing.

A third of employees left their companies last year, a slight increase compared to the fluctuation figures from a year earlier, according to a national fluctuation survey by HR-Evolution Kft.

Katalin Csikós-Nagy, fluctuation management expert and managing director of HR-Evolution Kft., said that the main reason for the deteriorating fluctuation data is that the potential labour reserve is decreasing year by year, and companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find people.

It is interesting to note that despite the economic difficulties, turnover at companies has not decreased: the average rate of churn was 33 percent last year, one percentage point higher than a year earlier.

190 companies with 167,000 employees took part in the national survey, which was conducted for the fifth time.

"A contradictory situation has emerged. Economic difficulties, prices, inflation and rising energy prices are simultaneously curbing and increasing turnover. The willingness of workers to change jobs is weakened because they fear for their jobs, on the one hand, they don't know what will happen. On the other hand, the struggling to make ends meet or the struggle to maintain living standards has made many people open to changing jobs in the hope of higher incomes," explains Katalin Csikós-Nagy, turnover management expert and managing director of HR-Evolution Kft.

While turnover among manual workers remained unchanged at 40 percent last year, it rose to an all-time high of 19 percent among intellectual workers. That's up two percentage points from last year and five percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic figures.

The main reasons for rising turnover in intellectual jobs are overwork, lack of feedback and lack of development. Another common reason for quitting, according to Katalin Csikós-Nagy, is that many companies want to return to the pre-pandemic home-office-free work schedule, but can no longer put the genie back in the bottle. Home office intellectual work is now standard practice and can be a concrete reason for dismissal if a company does not offer this option to its employees when it otherwise could.

In the retail sector, meanwhile, turnover rates fell significantly by 5 percentage points, from 28 percent to 23 percent. In services, turnover was flat at 31 percent, while in manufacturing it rose 2 percentage points to 36 percent.

"Trade has seen spectacular growth in recent years. Today, the sector offers competitive working conditions and competitive wages, which contributes greatly to the reduction in fluctuation,"

The companies surveyed have taken a number of measures to reduce the impact of economic difficulties on workers in 2022.

Half (51%) of firms have implemented higher than usual wage increases. 37 percent increased their commuting allowance.22 percent of respondents gave a one-off allowance and 15 percent gave a regular allowance. The level of fringe benefits was increased by 6 percent of the firms surveyed.

In 2023, 190 small, medium and large companies with more than 167,000 employees across the country participated in the turnover benchmark survey. Data source: online questionnaire and interviews with HR managers. The survey has been conducted once a year since 2018.

The average wage increase was 11 percent in 2022. Only 10 per cent of the companies surveyed had made redundancies at the same rate as the previous year, and 12 per cent of firms deliberately did not replace workers lost due to staff turnover.

"We estimate that economic uncertainty has improved turnover figures by 10 percent. As the difficulties ease, turnover is expected to continue to rise. The global trend of declining worker loyalty, which is increasingly present in our country, especially among the younger generations, is also exacerbating emigration," says Katalin Csikós-Nagy.

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