Case Study · Meat Processing · Response Group Insights
Why Do People Leave Red Meat Processing? A Three-Year Study Across 25 Plants
How Response and the Australian Meat Processor Corporation built the industry’s first retention benchmark, and a framework plants could act on.
The Challenge
Labour attraction and retention is the single highest input cost for red meat processors, at nearly 60% of total operating costs (excluding livestock). When the project began in 2019, most plants were estimated to be running at only 80% capacity, and many were delaying or cancelling expansion because of unfilled jobs.
High turnover hurts productivity at plant level and the industry’s international competitiveness. The Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC) wanted empirical data on current retention rates, the real reasons behind turnover, and a roadmap for change.
The Industry
AMPC is the specialist research and development provider for Australian red meat processors. It represents 108 members across 137 processing sites, from small family-owned businesses to large multi-site corporations.
Together the sector contributes about 100,000 direct and indirect jobs and turned over $19.2 billion in 2020–21.
The Approach
Response was approached by AMPC in 2019 to develop a research-based employee retention framework. Over three years the team worked with 25 plants nationwide in three phases:
- Research: analysing employee data across every plant to establish the industry’s average turnover, with plants able to compare against other plants’ de-identified data. Interviews explored why people leave the industry, and why they stay.
- Development: building an Employee Retention Framework of 12 broad-based retention practices, shaped by the issues most plants shared.
- Adoption: one-on-one workshops with each plant to choose the actions that would make the most difference, supported by best practice guides, a framework of excellence and case studies.
When COVID-19 stopped travel in March 2020, workshops and reviews moved online, and Response set up an online Community of Practice where senior leaders could share knowledge and solve problems with their peers.
The Results
The project concluded in September 2022 and produced a detailed report on exit interviews, focus groups and survey data, along with more than 20 resource guides and tools.
Before the project, the industry had no benchmark data on employee retention. There is now an industry-accepted rate, and plants can track their own retention against it. As a result of the research, plants also benefited from Queensland and New South Wales state funding to develop leaders based on the study’s recommendations.
Where It Led
AMPC has used the project’s data to set an ambitious target: halving the industry’s employee turnover rate, currently averaging 61%, between 2020 and 2030.
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