Why do employees turnover

Reuse Permissions. Image Caption. Retention Relationship Management. You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark. OK My Bookmarks. Please confirm that you want to proceed with deleting bookmark. Delete Cancel. You have successfully removed bookmark. Delete canceled. Please log in as a SHRM member before saving bookmarks. OK Proceed. Your session has expired. Please log in as a SHRM member. Cancel Sign In. Please purchase a SHRM membership before saving bookmarks.

OK Join. An error has occurred. From Email. To Email. Send Cancel Close. Post a Job See All Jobs. Move your HR career forward. Applicants now have the option to test from home. Exhibit III shows the percentage of employees, by skill category, who selected various environmental reasons for staying with their companies. These figures highlight the varied degrees of significance people with different skill levels place on environmental factors:.

Exhibit III. Hence there seem to be real differences in the importance the three groups attach to environmental factors. Additionally, we might note that managers are more willing to look for new jobs, even though this may be difficult, whereas the low-skill workers tend to be unwilling to do this.

Exhibit III also shows the significance of environmental factors for employees with different degrees of job satisfaction. Such reasons for staying are self-defeating and hardly could be considered right. These turn-offs have not yet affected turnover statistics, but still they may be having just as severe, or even a more severe, effect on the company. These employees see themselves as so locked in by the environment that they have little alternative but to stay; and, therefore, the possibility of reduced productivity or behavior antagonistic to the organization is great.

Historically this locked-in, turned-off condition has been considered characteristic of manufacturing or unskilled-labor categories, primarily. However, recent reports of increased union interest at the managerial level suggest that it is occurring at higher levels of the organization as well. One study shows that alienation is not limited to the hourly ranks, but may occur at any level of an organization.

We gained some insight into why an employee stays with a company when he is dissatisfied with his job, supervisor, benefits, pay, and so on. These employees are excellent examples of personnel who have not affected the turnover statistics but who may have left the company, psychologically, long ago.

This finding illustrates the fact that the reasons people stay are not necessarily the opposite of the reasons why people leave. One often hears negative statements about supervisors and jobs in exit interviews; yet, of the employees we studied, many who made such statements are still with the companies about which they complain. These are the turn-offs. Moreover, it suggests that these employees do not have as much job mobility as many companies assume.

The reinforcement that environmental factors give to the inertia of these alienated employees must be quite powerful, and it will probably take a strong force to break their inertia—in extreme cases, discharge. It might be concluded at this point that level in the organization, race, tenure, education, and degree of job satisfaction determine why people stay.

However, we found a factor more potent than any of these—namely, the work ethic of the people involved in the study. Human beings exist at different levels of psychological development, and these levels are expressed in the values they hold respecting their work. This level of psychological development is restricted primarily to infants, people with serious brain deterioration, and certain psychopathic conditions.

For practical purposes, employees are not ordinarily found at Level 1. These employees are best suited to jobs that offer easy work, friendly people, fair play, and, above all, a good boss. An employee at this level believes that he may not have the best job in the world, but he does as well as others with jobs like his.

He likes a boss who tells him exactly what to do and how to do it, and who encourages him by doing it with him. The two major requirements of a job for this employee are that it pay well and keep people off his back.

He does not care for any kind of work that ties him down, but he will do it if he must in order to get some money. Because of the raw, rugged value system of this employee, he needs a boss who is tough, but allows him to be tough too. This employee likes a job which is secure, where the rules are followed, and no favoritism is shown.

He feels that he has worked hard for what he has and thinks he deserves some good breaks. Others, he believes, should realize that it is their duty to work. The ideal job for this employee is one which is full of variety, allows some free wheeling and dealing, and offers pay and bonus on the basis of results.

He feels he is responsible for his own success and is constantly on the lookout for new opportunities. A good boss for this employee understands the politics of getting the job done, knows how to bargain, and is firm but fair.

A job which allows for the development of friendly relationships with supervisors and others in the work group appeals to this employee. Working with people toward a common goal is more important than getting caught up in a materialistic rat race.

He likes a boss who gets people working in close harmony by being more a friendly person than a boss. This employee likes a job where the goals and problems are more important than the money, prestige, or how it should be done. He prefers work of his own choosing that offers continuing challenge and requires imagination and initiative. To him, a good boss is one who gives him access to the information he needs and lets him do the job in his own way.

Exhibit IV tabulates the top ten reasons employees stay, based on their psychological level. It shows a startling dichotomy. Employees possessing relatively high tribalistic or egocentric values stay mainly because of environmental reasons, whereas employees with relatively high manipulative or existential values stay primarily for inside-the-company reasons, many of which are motivational. We also found that the tribalistic or egocentric employees are located primarily in the low-skill manufacturing functions and that manipulative or existential employees are located primarily in management, research, or professional positions.

Exhibit IV. Although not all the implications are clear at this point, it seems apparent that corporate managers, in deciding on policies and philosophy, in reality have been talking to themselves about themselves. That is, they tend to adopt policies and theories of human motivation that appeal to their own individual value systems, under the assumption that all employees have similar values. For example, many a manipulative manager presumes that money and large, status-laden offices motivate other people in the same way they drove him to his present level of success.

He may have climbed the corporate ladder, but as our results clearly show, for many employees the ladder does not even exist. This is not meant as a criticism of managerial value systems, but as a description of reality. One can expect leaders, whatever their values, to adopt policies which most appeal to their own value system. An individual makes a decision based on what he thinks is right.

What is right depends on his values. However, since values of people are not the same, what is right to the manager is often wrong for the employee.

The Work Institute identified 52 different reasons behind people quitting their jobs. Split into categories, major causes of employee turnover look as follows:. Along with lack of career development, work-life balance, and manager behavior as the top categories, there are other essential reasons.

They include wrong hiring strategy, toxic culture, lack of attachment to the company values and goals, and employee burnout, partly caused by the new reality coming along with the pandemic. Either way, something probably needs to change. Solution: Transparency is key. Being as open and transparent as possible about big picture company goals can help create a shared vision and sense of purpose.

Recognition is also important. By publicly recognizing individual and team achievements, you remind each member of your organization that their job matters—that their work on day-to-day tasks helps achieve larger goals.

Most importantly, give your people something to believe in. Overworked employees are prone to illness, high stress, absenteeism, and in some cases, burnout and depression. In fact, working over 55 hours in a week is extremely bad for you in many ways. Does your company have enough resources, unrealistic deadlines, too much volume, lack of training to do the job efficiently?

Pinpoint the root cause and make changes, fast. You can also praise employees who prioritize their work-life balance and discourage staying late. On the other hand, a lack of challenging or engaging work is also a major cause of employee turnover. In other words, boredom.

Employees grow bored with their work for a number of different reasons.