This could mean the buoyant labor market may continue well into the new year, according to the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resources Management.

The institute interviewed 112 corporations employing 125,000 people, and found the turnover rate was 4.54 percent, the highest since it started collecting data in 2002.

The figure is 0.32 percentage points higher than the previous quarter, and up 1.31 percentage points when compared to the same period last year.

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"The robust economy has helped push up turnover rates," said Lai Kam- tong, president of the institute.

He said the reasons why people switch jobs were related to changes in job location and operations and because of external factors such as rent, revenue and raw material prices.

He added that factors such as the inability of management to do their jobs, the lack of a communicative culture in organizations, their not taking care of employees, better packages on offer at other companies and new challenges being offered elsewhere are also reasons companies cannot retain staff.

The highest staff turnover rate by sector was seen in retail at 9.64 percent, followed by business and professional services at 7.65 percent and by the wholesale, import and export and trading services at 7.64 percent.

"As our society becomes more and more service-based, opening new retail stores, like boutiques and gadget shops, is becoming easier. This increases the chances for people to switch jobs," Lai said in explaining why the retail sector saw the highest staff turnover rate.

High staff turnover was also found among clerical or frontline staff at 5.18 percent, followed by the middle- management or non-managerial professional segment.

Staff vacancy rates reached 3.97 percent, an increase of 0.46 percentage points from the second quarter. On a year-on-year basis, the increase was 0.88 percentage points.

The retail sector again scored the highest vacancy rate at 6.13 percent, followed by engineering at 5.61 percent and the financial services, banking and insurance sectors at 5.36 percent.

The highest vacancy rate was found in the middle management non- managerial professional staff grade at 4.94 percent, followed by the clerical or frontline segment at 3.86 percent.

Lai expects the turnover rate to continue to be high next year, but could not give an estimate.

Meanwhile, the institute also conducted its first-ever survey on employee wellness programs in August and September.

The survey found that only 31.4 percent out of the 137 firms employing over 100,000 people had a comprehensive program with a well-organized specialized task force to look after such plans.

Another 53.3 percent said they had ad hoc employee wellness programs.

Most companies, or 77.6 percent, said their program consist of limiting work hours to five-day weeks.

Family-leave benefits were given by 56 percent of the companies while 50.9 percentsaid they provided interpersonal or personal development for their workers.