Young workers 'high risk' of jumping ship - survey

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Workers under 30 are the least loyal employee age group in New Zealand, a new jobs survey shows.

International research company CEB quizzed about 2000 workers on their job plans over the next year for the survey.

A range of factors including whether workers were actively looking for other jobs, how often they thought about quitting and whether they planned to change jobs in the next year were used to assess which workers were at "high risk" of leaving.

The findings showed workers aged 18 to 29 were most likely to leave their jobs. Those aged between 50 and 70 were deemed to be most loyal, earning a "low risk" rating for jumping ship in the workplace.

Brad Adams, head of Human Resources Research Asia Pacific at CEB, said the results reflected different values between older and younger Kiwis. Workers in the younger age bracket were often keen to "pursue new opportunities".

"Younger workers are also still figuring out what their passion is and what career experiences will make them happy," Mr Adams said.

David Lowe, general manager at the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said most businesses preferred to have a range of staff members of different ages to help keep staff turnover relatively steady.

"There are some businesses who have predominantly a particular age range and they have to come up with particular steps about how to deal with that [staff turnover]," he said.

Daniel Haines, president of the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations, said: "When you do hit 30, you're thinking about having families and paying mortgages - there's a lot of different constraints on your time and your options."