Gone are the days of indiscriminate job-hopping and fickle freelancing in the UK. According to new research, employees are in it for the long haul with average of 4.5 years per job.

With the nation facing an almost unprecedented skills shortage, employers are bracing themselves for higher staff turnover, as their employees are given the bargaining power to move on more quickly to their next role. Yet the research from global recruiters, BPS World, suggests employees are far more loyal than businesses expect.

The survey of over over 1000 part-time and full time employees found that staff usually stay with one employer for nearly five years. A third even go so far to say they usually stay in one role for more than 6 years.

BPS World also asked respondents about the longest time they’ve spent with one employer to date, and found that 45 per cent have worked for one company for ten years or more at a certain point in their career. 43 per cent also said they’d consider staying with their ‘dream’ employer for life.

“Employers will be reassured to see that for the most part, employees are not jumping from job to job in a matter of months as some headlines would suggest. Whilst this is encouraging, it’s important that businesses don’t become complacent; employers that consider employee engagement to be low priority will without doubt lose talented staff,” Simon Conington, MD of BPS World, said.

When asked why they stayed put in their longest serving role, employees ranked enjoyment of their job as the number one reason, followed by being treated well and respected by their employer, and being well paid.

Employers were also asked why they believed their longest standing team members stayed with them. While most believed that job satisfaction is the biggest pull for talent retention, employers believed that progression prospects rank highly. Almost a third ranked this as a top retention driver, but only 13 per cent of employees surveyed said progression prospects were the reason why they stayed in their longest serving role.

There were other disparities between employers and their staff, with one in five employers believing that pride in working for the company is the top reason for their employees staying in role. But just 11 per cent of the employees themselves rated that as the biggest driver for them remaining in post.

“A certain amount of staff turnover is of course healthy for a business, but losing a highly skilled team member presents obvious challenges,” added Conington. ” Employers are rightly appreciating that their staff need to enjoy what they do if they’re going to hang onto them, but there is a slight mismatch in what else they believe is important to their teams, versus what actually retains a talented staff member. It’s vital that they don’t rely on assumptions, and encourage transparency and open conversations with their employees to foster a culture of loyalty and engagement within their business.”