51% of city workers do not see a future within their company

According to the results of the CitiPeople Index from global recruitment specialist Morgan McKinley, an astonishing 51% of city workers felt that there were no future development opportunities within the company they currently worked for. The survey covered 800 city workers in both London and Dublin.

49% of those surveyed believed that opportunities did exist within their current company. 3% of city employees ''strongly agreed'' that their skill-set was being fully utilised within their current role. A further 36% of employees ''agreed''. However, an astonishing 61% of employees did not feel that their skill-set was being used to the optimum within their current role.

When asked about performance management reviews within city firms, 53% of employees felt that they accurately recorded their performance, although 43% did not feel that promotions were directly linked to performance management systems. A further 37% of candidates did not feel that performance management reviews adequately assessed their potential to move to the next career level. However, on a positive note, 75% of city workers did find appraisals useful in terms of future career development.

60% of city employees felt that firms implement training initiatives after considering the employees skills/knowledge gap. However, 58% felt that they were inadequately consulted on the types of development training they would like to receive. 67% of workers felt that the training was run to specifically improve their skills for their current role. 29% disagreed with this statement. Encouragingly, 61% of employees felt that they received sufficient training and could easily take on new responsibilities in their current role.

Hesketh Emden, head of Performance Consulting, OakwoodUK.com, which works with clients in the Financial Services Sector comments: Yet again these results bear out our experience that there''s still much to do to integrate recruitment, development, performance management, retention and succession planning.

The good news is that 75% of city workers find appraisals very useful in terms of future career development. A HR source in a City financial institution commented: Performance Reviews are an essential back up to ensure employees understand their development. Employees may find them frustrating or believe they have little impact but without performance management systems the situation would be much worse.

David Twiddle, managing director of Morgan McKinley comments: The results of this survey should provide very interesting feedback for HR departments within financial services. Employees find performance management reviews essential to their development. However, 51% do not believe that opportunities exist within their current firm. The challenge for HR Professionals is in retaining their ''star'' players in the current market where they see no visible opportunities to progress and develop.

www.morgan-mckinley.co.uk