Turnover

Turnover for the Public Service as a whole has been fairly consistent over the past five years. However this overall figure masks considerable variation between departments and between occupations.

The calculation of turnover is complicated by the need to distinguish between planned and unplanned turnover. As a general rule, the tenure of fixed-term employees is planned and their cessations are anticipated. As a result they do not form part of the department's ongoing core capability. The costs of planned turnover, which include both staff on fixed-term contracts and cessations due to restructuring, can be anticipated and weighed up against other HR management options. Unplanned turnover, primarily resignations of open-term employees, is both difficult to anticipate and may include the loss of key staff who are critical to the ongoing operation of departments.

Table 2 below shows three measures of turnover. Gross turnover measures all cessations (both fixed and open-term) as a proportion of all staff. This is an indicator of the total amount of churn in retention and the total costs of this activity. Core unplanned turnover (which is available for 2000 and 2001 only) shows the number of unplanned cessations of open-term staff as a proportion of total open-term employment⁸. Gross turnover, excluding terminations due to the end of fixed-term contracts, is also shown to provide a link to the measures used in past reports.

The core unplanned turnover rate across all Public Service departments was 12.6% (14.1% for women, 10.6% for men) for the year to 30 June 2001. The figure for the previous year was 10.7%. It is unclear how much of this turnover represents a capability loss to the Public Service, because departments do not hold reliable data on movement between Public Service departments.

Over the next year the State Services Commission will review the collection of data on the mobility of staff between departments to see if there are cost-effective techniques that could provide reliable information. This would provide a much better understanding of career progression and labour market dynamics within the Public Service and assist in the early identification of capability risks.

The Public Service turnover rates for the last five years are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Public Service Turnover Rates (%) 1997 - 2001

1

Occupations⁹ with high core unplanned turnover rates are shown in Table 3 below. Many of these occupation groups are in the corporate and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) areas. While many of these occupation groups are found in large numbers outside the Public Service, they tend to be only found in small numbers within each department. Social workers had core unplanned turnover of 13% and gross turnover of 21%.

Table 3: Occupations with High¹⁰ Turnover - June 2001

* Excludes terminations due to redundancy and enhanced early retirement

** Based on the average of the number of open-term employees in each group in 2000 and in 2001.

Table 4 below shows that turnover rates also varied by length of service. Only 14% of turnover was amongst staff with tenure of ten or more years, who make up 32% of all Public Service staff. In contrast, 41% of turnover was amongst staff with less than two years completed service, who make up 26% of all Public Service open-term staff, although it is unclear how much of this is movement between departments.

⁸ Both these measures differ from those shown in reports from previous years, where cessations due to the end of fixed-term contracts were excluded from gross turnover. This is because the new unit record survey has revealed considerable difficulty in distinguishing between cessations of fixed-term staff due the end of their contract and other reasons, such as resignations shortly before the end of their term. As a result many cessations of fixed-term staff were included in unplanned turnover.

⁹ The descriptions used in this section are the terms used by Statistics NZ in their most detailed classification of occupations (5 digit level).

¹⁰ All occupations with turnover above 20% have been included.

¹¹ Call-centre staff make up most of the technical representatives occupation.