We have not run a large-scale opinion survey on this topic — what follows is an honest synthesis of what our teams observe, conversation after conversation, with the HR directors and executives who use Socium day to day across several sectors and countries. Read it as a trend radar, not a statistical study.
1. Turnover is rising, especially in certain sectors
Without claiming a precise national figure, one trend comes up clearly in our client conversations: staff turnover is accelerating faster in tech, retail and finance than in industry or energy, where headcount stays more stable. The point that worries our contacts the most themselves: many don't track turnover by tenure cohort — only as a global average, which hides the real leak points (often the first year).
2. Remote work has stabilised, it hasn't spread further
A forced 100% return to office has become rare among the organisations we support — but full remote also stays a minority, concentrated in tech and consulting. The norm that's emerging: a number of on-site days negotiated per role or per team, rather than imposed uniformly by a blanket policy.
3. Variable pay is getting more complex, especially on the sales side
Among clients with structured sales teams, the variable share of total pay is rising and the schemes are getting more sophisticated — accelerators, tiers, in-year adjustments. The very concrete consequence we observe: variable-pay spreadsheets quickly become unmanageable and error-prone once a sales team passes about ten people.
4. HR data remains under-used, even at mature companies
This is the most consistent point in our conversations: many HR departments still steer with very few regularly tracked indicators, and often discover, once a dashboard is in place, gaps they hadn't suspected (actual time-to-hire, leave distribution, the real cost of a vacant role). It's not a lack of will — it's a lack of a tool that centralises data without manual re-entry.
5. HR AI is advancing on specific use cases, not broad promises
The use cases that deliver for our clients are targeted: CV screening and pre-qualification, HR document generation, automated answers to repetitive employee questions. The more ambitious promises — fine-grained individual turnover prediction, fully automated management coaching — remain, in our experience, disappointing in practice. See our dedicated article for detail.
What to take away
- Track turnover by tenure cohort, not just as a global average.
- Remote work negotiated per role is becoming the norm — avoid a uniform top-down policy.
- If your sales variable pay is getting more complex, get it out of Excel before it becomes a source of errors.
- An HR dashboard often changes more than a new process would.
Want to go further?
See how Socium transforms HR and payroll practices across 12 African countries.