Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Quit

/Leave Their Job:

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Updated August 22, 2015.
Employees quit their job for many reasons. They follow spouses across the country, stay home
with children, and go back to school. Those reasons are tough to address by an employer because
they involve life events in the employees world outside of work.
But, the majority of reasons why employees quit their job are under the control of the employer.
In fact, any element of your current workplace, your culture and environment, the employees
perception of his job and opportunities are all factors that the employer affects.
The best way to retain employees is to stay in touch with what theyre thinking. Are they happy
with their work? Are their needs for challenge, belonging, development, and meaningful work
met? Do they have the communication, problem solving, feedback, and recognition that they
need from their boss?
If you stay in touch with your employees, you can head off potential retention issues.

But, you must think about employee retention every day. Are the systems, processes, and
requirements in your company supportive of employees?
Do they support the most important needs of your employees for meaningful work, market
compensation and benefits, and the ability to have an effect on their work and workplace? Most
importantly, do they make employees want to stay?

Ask them. Hold stay interviews to determine why employees stay with your organization. Then,
pay attention to and enhance the factors they identify that keep them coming back every day.
Employees job search for a reason. Find out what it is before the employee announces her
departure.
Sure, a great opportunity drops into an employees lap occasionally.
But, this is not the norm. Provide that great opportunity in your company and know what that
great opportunity is to retain your best employees.
Here are ten critical reasons why employees quit their job. You can manage them.

Relationship with boss

Employees dont need to be friends with their boss but they need to have a relationship.
The boss is too much of an integral part of their daily lives at work for an uncomfortable
relationship.
The boss provides direction and feedback, spends time in one-to-one meetings, and
connects the employee to the larger organization. To have a toxic relationship with the
person an employee reports to undermines the employees engagement, confidence and
commitment.
A bad boss is also the number one reason why employees quit their job. Here's how to get
along with your boss.

Bored and unchallenged by the work itself

No one wants to be bored and unchallenged by their work. Really. If you have an
employee who acts as if she is, you need to help her find her passion. Employees want to
enjoy their job. They spend more than a third of their days working, getting ready for
work, and transporting themselves to work.
Work closely with employees who report to you to ensure that each employee is engaged,
excited, and challenged to contribute, create, and perform. Otherwise, you will lose them
to an employer who will.

Relationships with coworkers

When an employee leaves my company, every email that is sent to the whole company, to
say good-bye, includes a comment about passionate coworkers who the employee cares
about and will miss. Second only to an employees manager, the coworkers with whom
he sits, interacts, and serves with on teams, are a critical components of an employees
work environment.
Research from the Gallup organization indicates that one of the 12 factors that illuminate
whether an employee is happy on their job is having a best friend at work. Relationships
with coworkers retain employees. Notice and intervene if problems exist.

Opportunities to use skills and abilities

When employees use their significant skills and abilities on the job, they feel a sense
pride, accomplishment, and self-confidence. They are participating in activities that they
are good at and that stretch their skills and abilities even further.
Employees want to develop and grow their skills. If theyre not able to do this in your
jobs, theyll find one where they can. This includes opportunity. If an employee cant see
a path to continued growth in their current organization, they are likely to look elsewhere
for a career development or promotion opportunity. Make sure that youre talking with
them and that you know their hopes and dreams.

Contribution of work to the organizations business goals

Managers need to sit with each reporting employee and discuss the relevance of the
employees job and key contributions and deliverables to the overall strategy and
business plan of the organization. Employees need to feel connected and that they are part
of an effort that is larger than just their job.
Too many managers assume that the employee will receive the communication from
executive staff and make this leap. They dont. They need your help to understand and
connect their job to the bigger picture. If theyre not part of it, youll lose them.

Autonomy and independence

Organizations talk about empowerment, autonomy, and independence, but they are not
something that you can do to people or give them. They are traits and characteristics that
an employee needs to pursue and embrace.
You are responsible for the work environment that enables them to do this. They are
responsible for doing it.
A colleague presented a session about the Oz Principles at a recent company event. He
pointed out that by creating a culture of accountability, you create empowerment as
employees own and execute their responsibilities. Without this, your best employees will
leave.

Employees resign when their compensation package is below market

They can get more money by changing jobs - the last figure I saw was an average 10%
increase for going to a new employer. Especially for hard-to-fill positions, you need to
stay on top of the competition or you'll lose skilled employees

Organizations financial stability

Financial instability: a lack of sales, layoffs or reduced work hours, salary freezes,
successful competitors highlighted in the news, bad press, employee turnover, mergers
and acquiring companies, all lead to an employees feeling of instability and a lack of
trust.

Employees who are worried tend to leave. Make every change and potential change
transparent. Let them know how the business is doing at all times and what the
organizations plans are for staying on track or recovering in the future.
But, the most important issue here is the employees trust in and respect for the
management team. If they respect your judgment, direction, and decision making, they
will stay. If not, they will leave. After all, they have the financial stability of their families
to consider when they decide which executive they will follow or not.

Overall corporate culture

While its not the top item on employee lists, the overall culture of your company makes
a difference for employees. Does your organization appreciate employees, treat them with
respect, and provide compensation, benefits, and perks that demonstrate respect and
caring?
Is your work environment for people conducive to employee satisfaction and
engagement? Do you provide events, employee activities, celebrations, and team building
efforts that make employees feel that your organization is a great place to work?
Employees appreciate a workplace in which communication is transparent, management
is accessible, executives are approachable and respected, and direction is clear and
understood. Your overall culture keeps employees or turns them away. Which gets you
what you want and need for success?

Managements recognition of employee job performance

Many place employee recognition further up the list, but this is where recognition scored
in a recent Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey of employees.
While recognition is important, it is not among employees chief concerns.
A lack of recognition can affect many of the above factors, especially culture, but its
probably not the deciding factor in an employee's decision to leave your organization.
Provide a lot of genuine appreciation and recognition as icing on the cake for employee
retention.
But, pay attention to the more significant factors, the cake, if you wish to retain your best
employees. Make recognition the way you live in your organization to keep your best
talent.

If you pay attention to these ten factors, you will reduce turnover and retain your most wanted
employees. If not, youll be holding regular exit interviews and good-bye lunches. Its expensive
to recruit a new employee. Why not expend the effort necessary to retain the employees that you
have already painfully recruited and hired?

http://humanresources.about.com/od/resigning-from-yourjob/a/top-10-reasons-employees-quit-their-job.htm

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Updated October 07, 2015.

Before you can improve employee satisfaction and employee engagement, you need to know
what to improve. The annual Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2011
Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey identifies the factors that are important in
employee job satisfaction and employee engagement as perceived by employees.
The surveys purpose is to assist employers to develop the right programs and practices when
they seek to have an impact on these two factors that are critical to employee morale and
motivation.
Understanding employee preferences provides guidance for the knowledgeable allocation of
resources.
The survey explored 35 aspects of employee job satisfaction, divided into four topic areas
career development, relationship with management, compensation and benefits, and work
environment. Added in 2011, the survey also explored employee engagement.
Satisfaction Survey Results

According to this study, 83% of U.S. employees reported overall satisfaction with their current
job, with 41% of employees indicating they were very satisfied and 42% somewhat satisfied.
Despite this high percentage of satisfied employees, the level of overall satisfaction has been
trending downward since 2009.

Employees in organizations that had fewer than 100 employees expressed satisfaction more
frequently than employees in larger organizations with 2500 or more employees. SHRM found
no significant differences in overall job satisfaction by employee industry, job tenure, race or
gender.
Engagement, however, is a different story. The U.S. has a problem with employee engagement.
In this years SHRM survey, employees were only moderately engaged (3.6) on a scale of 1 to 5,
where 5 is highly engaged. Findings by the Gallup organization about disengaged employees
were highlighted in the Wall Street Journal.
Gallup found 19% of 1,000 people interviewed "actively disengaged" at work.
These workers complain that they don't have the tools they need to do their jobs. They don't
know what is expected of them. Their bosses don't listen to them.
Top 10 Retention strategic plans

Employees identified these factors as their top 10 most important contributors to their job
satisfaction.

Job security: 63%, for the fourth consecutive year, as the top most important
determinant of job satisfaction. (67% of employees are very satisfied or
satisfied with their job security.)

Opportunities to Use Skills and Abilities: 62%. (74% are satisfied or very
satisfied in their workplace.)

Organizations Financial Stability: 55%. (63% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Relationship with Immediate Supervisor: 55%. (73% are satisfied or very

satisfied.)

Compensation: 54%. (61% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Benefits: 53%. (65% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Communication between Employees and Senior Management: 53% (54% are

satisfied or very satisfied.)

The Work Itself: 53%. (76% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Autonomy and independence: 52%. (69% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Managements Recognition of Employee Performance: 49%. (57% are

satisfied or very satisfied.)

Feeling Safe at Work: 48%. (78% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Overall Corporate Culture: 46%. (60% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Flexibility for Work-Life Balance: 38%. (65% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

Relationships with Coworkers: 38%. (76% are satisfied or very satisfied.)

SHRM Reports that Benefits which had been in the top two contributors to job satisfaction since
2002 slipped to fifth place. Relationship with their immediate supervisor is new this year to the
list of top five most important job satisfaction contributors. Among SHRMs other results:
Chance for career advancement (36%) has been declining since 2002. Coaching, mentoring, and
succession planning are less important in companies with less than 100 employees.
18 Employee Engagement Conditions

Employee engagement, according to the SHRM report, is more likely to occur when certain
conditions exist. Employers can maximize employee engagement via improving these factors.
The percentages indicate the overall satisfaction of employees with the listed condition of
engagement. The items are listed in order from the employee survey results: most satisfied to
least satisfied with the condition in their organization.

The work itself: 76%

Relationships with co-workers: 76%

Opportunities to use skills and abilities: 74%

Relationship with immediate supervisor: 73%

Contribution of work to organizations business goals: 71%

Autonomy and independence: 69%

Meaningfulness of job: 69%

Variety of work: 68%

Organizations financial stability: 63%

Overall corporate culture: 60%

Managements recognition of employee job performance: 57%

Job-specific training: 55%

Communication between employees and senior management: 54%

Organizations commitment to professional development: 54%

Networking: 49%

Organizations commitment to corporate social responsibility: 49%

Career development opportunities: 48%

Career advancement opportunities: 42%

With the percentages noted in both the satisfaction portion of the survey results and the
engagement aspects of the survey, employers have some work to do to fully satisfy and,
especially, engage employees. Note that four aspects of employee career and professional
development fall in the bottom seven for employee satisfaction:
Definition:
Work-life balance is a concept that supports the efforts of employees to split their time and
energy between work and the other important aspects of their lives. Work-life balance is a daily
effort to make time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth,
self care, and other personal activities, in addition to the demands of the workplace.
Work-life balance is assisted by employers who institute policies, procedures, actions, and
expectations that enable employees to easily pursue more balanced lives.

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Work Life Balance

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Stress

Work Flexibility

The pursuit of work-life balance reduces the stress employees experience. When they spend the
majority of their days on work-related activities and feel as if they are neglecting the other

important components of their lives, stress and unhappiness result. Work-life balance enables
employees to feel as if they are paying attention to all the important aspects of their lives.

Because many employees experience a personal, professional, and monetary need to achieve,
work-life balance is challenging. Employers can assist employees to experience work-life
balance by offering such opportunities as flexible work schedules, paid time off (PTO) policies,
responsible time and communication expectations, and company-sponsored family events and
activities.
Managers are important to employees seeking work-life balance. Managers who pursue work-life
balance in their own lives model appropriate behavior and support employees in their pursuit of
work-life balance. They create a work environment in which work-life balance is expected,
enabled, and supported. They retain outstanding employees to whom work-life balance is
important.

What Is Employee Turnover?

In human resource terms, employee turnover is a measurement of how long your employees stay
with your company and how often you have to replace them. Any time an employee leaves your
company, for any reason, they are called a turnover or separation.
Calculating Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is calculated by dividing separations by the total staff: employee turnover =
number of separations / average number of employees.
Generally, it is stated as an annual percentage. If you lost three staffers in the past year out of your
staff of 46, your annual turnover would be: employee turnover = 3 separations / 46 employees = .
0652 = 6.52% annual turnover.
If instead you had three staffers quit last month, and your total team is 46 employees, your turnover
rate would be: employee turnover = 3 separations in a month / 46 employees = .0652 = 6.52%
monthly. You would multiply this by 12 to calculate an annual rate, which assumes this same
turnover rate will continue for the entire year: 6.52% monthly * 12 months = 78.24% annually, for a
loss of three staffers each month.
As a double check - if this turnover continued, we would lose three staffers per month * 12 months =
36 for the year. And if we divide the 36 turnovers by our total staff of 46, we would get 78.26% (the
very slight difference is due to rounding).

What does this mean to you as a manager? Well, A 78% turnover rate in a team of 46 people means
that you will have to hire and train 36 new people a year. That is a lot of time you could be using
otherwise to manage your department and improve your own skills!
Causes of Employee Turnover
There are two main categories of turnover: voluntary and involuntary. Each of them has different
causes.
Voluntary turnover is when an employee quits. This can be due to finding a better position at
another company, a conflict with a supervisor or a personal reason, such as needing to stay home
with a family member.
Involuntary turnover is when an employee is laid off or fired, generally due to reducing staff
because of a business downturn or change in business focus or because of an employee taking
some action that is cause for termination, such as theft.
A Reasonable Level of Turnover
There will be times where employees leave the company, and so a goal of zero percent turnover is a
recipe for disappointment. To come up with a level that is reasonable, companies often look to
industry averages. A goal might be to keep turnover to a level no higher than the average for the
industry.
They might also come up with some additional metrics based on level of responsibility - so, for
example, the turnover for audit staff in an accounting firm might be evaluated separately from that
of audit partners.
Impact of a Turnover on a Company
The specific impact of replacing an employee varies based on many factors, including the difficulty
of filling the position, the amount of training required for a new employees and specific costs, such
as recruiter fees or advertisements.
In the fast food industry, it may be necessary to fill some positions every few months or even more
frequently. Workers in this industry tend to be unskilled and may change positions often since there
are many similar options available. In terms of costs, these positions generally require limited
training to reach full productivity, so replacing personnel will not tend to have much impact on the
business.
On the other hand, company presidents have often been with the same company for much of their
career and tend to be in the position for years, leading to very low turnover in that position. When a
company president leaves a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge will leave, which can impact
the business for years to come.

The Cost of Turnover

Turnover costs can be both direct and indirect.

Direct turnover costs would include the costs to locate, hire and train a new employee to fill the
position that was vacated. It also includes payment for unemployment and COBRA insurance for
employees who no longer work for the company.
Indirect costs can be harder to quantify and include things like lost sales or customers due to
inexperienced staff or being short-staffed, lost knowledge of company operations that has to be recreated later and the impact on morale of people leaving the company.