Press Room
Treasuring Talent
The question is not, "Can you afford to keep your most creative employees?" The question to ask yourself is, "Can you afford not to?"
Annual employee turnover rates for professional service firms including architects and interior designers hover around 15 percent, according to a 2004 study by Zweig White Information Services LLC. Yet retaining your best talent may be essential to winning great clients and projects.
Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality in San Francisco, which develops and owns hotels and restaurants in Northern California, factors in employee turnover when he's selecting design project teams. "Yes, this is a big issue as we hire people, not the company," he says. "We avoid design firms with high turnover. We do twice as many interviews as most other companies just to make sure we get the right fit."
