Staff Turnover and Retention in Southwark Sheltered Housing Department

Abstract

It has been observed that employee turnover particularly in the public sector, is becoming a problem. High staff turnover costs a substantial amount of money for advertising and training as well as time and energy. The costs associated with recruiting, selecting and training new employees often exceed 100% of the annual salary for the position being filled (Mello 2014 P.585). This research aims to identify the fundamental turnover factors in the London Borough of Southwark Sheltered Housing department. Key solutions to the problem of high staff turnover are developed and some employee retention strategies, which can be used within the public sector context are suggested. Data were collected by questionnaires distributed to all sheltered housing officers, senior and middle managers in the councils via email as well as telephone interviews. The outcome of this research can be used to reduce the costs associated with high staff turnover in the public sector.

Introduction

The long term success of any organisation very much depends on upon the retention of its employees for as long as possible. To a great extent, a happy atmosphere in the workplace, excellent customer service, increased productivity, an organisation's good reputation and long-term success are dependent upon the ability to retain the best employees in any organisation. Retaining employees for the longest period possible is in the best interest of any organisation; however, not every organisation is ¬capable of retaining its employees long enough or until the end of the given project (Ton 2014). In Southwark Council, there are twenty sheltered housing units. They are divided into three patches, named North East, North West and South Central. Each of these patches is managed by a senior sheltered housing officer. Each unit is managed by a scheme manager (sheltered housing officer), which means there are twenty scheme managers managed by three senior sheltered housing officers (SSHO).

In 2014, the majority of scheme managers were agency staff; subsequently five of them left the council to work elsewhere. This has left the rest of the team under huge pressure as they need to manage their scheme and cover other schemes on a daily basis, while not knowing when this problem is going to come to an end. Employees cannot take their annual leave unless they organise a cover for their scheme. Rent arrears were mounting higher than ever; void properties were not getting ready for viewing on the planned time scale; sickness level has significantly increased. In early 2015, two additional scheme managers left making the total number seven. Furthermore, the service manager who was responsible for running the entire sheltered housing scheme had left to take another post in the council and has been replaced by a temporary manager (Ronald, Burke, Noblet, & Cooper 2013 p.4).

The new service manager has tried to remove all the agency staff and replace them with permanent employees and employed two more permanent scheme managers. This was one step forward in terms of filling the vacancies. At present the department only has one temporary employee, the rest of them are permanent. There is no doubt this will improve the staff turnover (Boella & Turner, 2013, p.163). A few months later, one of the senior sheltered housing officers who was on permanent employment left to do a secondment within the council. This left the team one manager short and the service manager replaced the SSHO by another temporary manager. The SSHO only worked for two months and has been suspended pending further investigation. As a result, the two senior sheltered housing officers were forced to manage the entire twenty schemes between them. In other words, they ware managing ten schemes each.