Reducing Your Holiday Turnover Rate

When employees return from their break, it often comes with a reassessment of their workplace and role. This can often result in your employees looking around for new opportunities and thinking critically about their current work, pay, conditions, and prospects. 

As we learned from our soon-to-be-released Employee Sentiment Index, the percentage of employees ‘considering a career change’ usually peaks in Q1 (Jan-March 2024 29%). Importantly, we also found  that those ‘commencing a career change’ or ‘interviewing for a new role’ actually peaks in the second quarter of the year. This indicates that the time to concentrate on retention is right now, before consideration turns to commencement.

To improve this seasonal employee turnover, you can invest time and resources into your retention strategies. 

Why do employees jump ship after the holidays?

When an employee takes a holiday, personal re-evaluation often takes place. Your staff may use this time to reflect on their life, role, and career path. This ‘January turnover trend’ can be associated with:

• Burnout
• Job dissatisfaction
• Shifting priorities
• Lack of career progression
• Inadequate pay or benefits
• Insufficient flexibility or work/life balance.

Steps to retain your employees after the holiday break

There are some straightforward ways you can mitigate this churn. Let’s have a look at some simple strategies you can put into practice to improve your retention.

It’s worth remembering that retention efforts are an investment, not an outlay. 

According to current research from the Australian HR Institute, the most popular measures used by employers to help retain staff are enhanced flexible working arrangements (37%), increased learning and development opportunities (36%) and improved support for employee well-being (35%). 

1. Look hard at your flexibility

In 2025, flexible work arrangements are here to stay and have been found in multiple research studies to be one of the main driving factors of retention. 

If you’re not proactively providing flexibility and improving the work/life balance of your staff, you’re at risk of losing them to an organisation that does.  Are there ways you can offer more meaningful flexibility to your team, such as swappable in-office days, shorter Fridays, school pickup concessions, or personalised flexibility plans?

2. Offer continual learning and career development 

Personalised learning and development is crucial to employee satisfaction and retention. 

By using a modern Learning Management Software (LMS) you can easily deploy development plans and continual learning. Not only does this help your employees develop their careers, it also allows you to monitor learning and development in a centralised solution.

As staff settle into a new year, make sure you’re working with them to lay out a learning and development pathway.

3. Provide meaningful wellness initiatives

Another standout retention initiative for 2025 is providing wellness initiatives and support that make a real difference to your employee’s mental and physical health. Such initiatives can include:

• Gym memberships and organised physical activities
• Partnering with mental health organisations and support services
• Healthy snacks and dietary programs
• Flexible and personalised work arrangements
• Mental health days
• Volunteer days

4. Set goals for the year

It’s important to engage employees immediately to set new plans for the year ahead, or review existing goals.

By creating a meaningful development plan for your employees, and gaining their input, you can build your employee’s sense of ownership and keep them better engaged. Make sure this is a collaborative process that hinges on employee buy-in. Performance Management tools can be useful here to professionalise and streamline your goal setting and activation.

5. Implement financial incentives

Within organisational budgets and realities, offering incentives such as bonuses and pay rises is one of the more effective retention strategies at your fingertips. One reason employees are looking around at this time of year is to secure better pay or benefits, especially as the cost of living soars. Apart from pay bumps, it’s also pivotal to introduce benefits beyond salary such as  reward and recognition programs to support employees in times of financial stress. 

By offering performance based bonuses, benefits programs, or financial incentives, you can encourage employees to not only stay onboard, but also to perform at their peak.

6. Improve your onboarding

This is more of a futureproofing exercise than a bandaid fix, but it’s important you sharpen your onboarding processes as soon as possible to shore up retention for the immediate future. Those who experienced a first class onboarding experience are more likely to stay the course and engage fully with your business.

Act immediately

The longer you take to address retention and possible staff dissatisfaction, the higher the chance your key staff will start cementing their thoughts on leaving. By concentrating on immediate engagement, financial incentives, wellness programs, flexibility, and career development, you can help avoid post holiday exodus and shore up your team for the year ahead.

Find out how ELMO Software’s HR solutions can help with employee engagement, goal setting and performance management to support your retention efforts. Chat with our team today.