High turnover rate keeps growing for A&D workforce

Despite strong growth in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry, its workforce turnover rate of 13% is almost 3.5x higher than the 3.8% national average. And it’s likely the rate will rise further as 25% of the A&D workforce has reached or is past eligible retirement age.

These alarming numbers come from a survey PwC conducted with the Aerospace Industries Association, “Workforce trends facing the A&D industry.” PwC’s research indicates the above-average A&D turnover may be driven in part by challenges with employee empowerment and engagement.

Scott Thompson, Global A&D leader, PwC US, offers insights into these statistics and suggests strategies to overcome the challenges.

“The average retirement age has been ticking up, so folks who were retirement eligible, many have stuck around a little longer,” Thompson says. It’s not just workers choosing to retire now, Thompson notes, but the workers in line to take their place. “You have a lot of people who are retirement eligible, but the next generation is a smaller group demographically.”

There are no easy solutions to the retirement problem. “I think the best way to deal with it is through effective knowledge transfer, making sure you’re very deliberate about how to capture the knowledge and transfer it to the next generation,” Thompson says. “You can’t just rely on it happening organically.”

The report states A&D organizations continue to face the challenge of creating experiences driving retention once an employee has accepted an offer. The good news is 72% of the A&D workforce aligns with the mission, purpose, and values of the industry.

“I think 72% was higher than many of us expected,” Thompson adds. “People really resonate with the mission and the values of the industry – defending freedom, defending security – so that’s something the industry can do a better job of leveraging in attracting and retaining talent.”

Despite investments in new tools and technologies, 48% of A&D employees surveyed feel they don’t have the right tools and resources to effectively and efficiently do their jobs. Sixty percent of mid-career employees feel the same way and are 4x more likely to say they didn’t feel empowered to improve work processes and performance.

Employees perceive they’re lacking some of the tools they’d like to have, based on what they see other industries adopting. “The report doesn’t give us data about what tools are working effectively or better, but we know this industry has a history of manual and paper-based systems,” Thompson explains. “A lot of things still haven’t been digitized, but we see a lot of investment toward modernizing, digitization, and upgrades across all sorts of information, so that’s a positive sign.”

With all the challenges the A&D industry faces, empowering employees to improve the way work gets done should be a priority. – Eric