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A research and advisory firm has urged companies to look into why IT staff stay in or leave their job with the business, a computing website has reported.

Computer Economics hopes that the survey may find how businesses retain employees, particularly as staff turnover in IT is "getting worse" because of the current economic climate, vnunet.com reported.

Director of research for Computer Economics, John Longwell, noted that a typical business could view a staff turnover of five per cent as the expected cost of its company.

He added: "IT managers often worry that investments in training will be reaped by other organisations when IT workers shop their new skills around.

"But this study indicates that investing in training is actually the best way to retain employees."

Personnel Today revealed that average staff turnover in the UK was between 15 and 20 per cent, with some sectors experiencing 50 per cent turnover.

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.