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Why Do Employees Quit?

by Dave Nerz

I just saw a Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey that listed the top 6 reasons employees leave your company.  They listed the following reasons:

  1. Higher Compensation 61%
  2. Long-term Growth Potential 44%
  3. Geography 32%
  4. Better Title 25%
  5. Alignment with Company Culture 19%
  6. Flexibility to work from home 14%

Why-Employees-QuitWhile the survey was done and the result captured, I find it difficult to believe. I think that compensation is an easy excuse to cover the more complex reasons impacting employee retention.

In 2013, NPAworldwide did a similar survey called “NPA Global Retention Survey.” We asked recruiters to report on actual hires made in the prior year and the motivation for employees leaving the existing employer. If you know a little bit about recruitment professionals, most will start by understanding the employee’s motivation for exit. If it is exclusively money, that is a red flag and indicates a high risk recruiting scenario. The reason I place more faith in this employee retention survey is that in these instances a recruitment professional dislodged a passive candidate and moved them to a new company. For obvious reasons, employees who are not fairly paid will leave to seek new employment. Let’s assume, to better understand the true motivation of an employee, your company fairly pays its employees. That means your employees are passive candidates, not really looking for the next job but if properly approached by a recruitment professional, they may consider a new employment situation. What is the top risk in that for your passive candidates?

Our survey found that passive candidates left because they were seeking growth/challenge/change, had unsatisfactory career progression, or were lacking job stability. Only 5.3% of respondents mentioned compensation as the reason for change. Many took accepted comparable pay rates to get to a better situation. Of the respondents, 47.9% listed an organizational issue as a primary motivator and 41.5% listed a job specific factor as the reason for change.

The most interesting part of this is that these top three issues and motivators are all very much within the control of employers. Don’t rush to judgment and say that employees leave because of compensation. Take a deeper look. Obviously competitive pay is a requirement to keep employees, but quality management, a great culture and job stability are motivators that will make a huge difference in employee retention.

The full NPAworldwide survey is available here.

Posted in: Employers

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