The Top 10 Reasons That Your Employees Really Quit

Ever wonder why your employees really quit? A study of nearly 20,000 job quitters reveals some rather intriguing facts.

The data

The myth: 89 percent of employers believe that employees leave because of money.

The reality: 88 percent of employees leave because of things other than money.

According to the study, here are the top 10 reasons employees quit:

Limited career opportunities (16 percent)
Lack of respect/support from supervisor (13 percent)
Money (12 percent)
Lack of interesting/challenging job duties (11 percent)
Lack of leadership from supervisor (9 percent)
Bad work hours (6 percent)
Unavoidable reasons (5 percent)
Bad employee relations by supervisor (4 percent)
Favoritism by supervisor (4 percent)
Lack of recognition for contributions (4 percent)

How to keep every one of your employees

The above data ties in rather nicely with the facts and figures presented in my last webinar, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Employee Engagement. (Here‘s a summary if you just want the highlights.)

Most notably:

Only 29 percent of employees are truly engaged (Gallup);
Disengaged employees are five times more likely to leave than engaged employees (Cornell);
Despite all the investment and attention in recent years, engagement is actually decreasing (Gallup, Conference Board); and
Pay doesn’t rank among the top four (4) engagement drivers (Right Management).

The top 10 list above makes it 187 percent clear that supervisors play a humongous role in whether employees leave or stay. As we often say here on the Blawg, it’s all about LOVE: treating your employees the way you’d like to be treated. According to the experts, the No. 1 thing managers can do to make employees stay is “value” them (Right Management), “care” about them (Monster/Unum) and be “genuinely interested in their well-being” (Towers Watson).

How to keep employee happy and engaged

But exactly how do do that? Here in one handy chart is a summary of approximately 85,927 hours of engagement research — something we call THE MAGICAL WHEEL OF ENGAGEMENT:

Employees desperately want their leaders to:

ENVISION a bold, clear and inspirational future;
EMPATHIZE with them to understand their motivations and strengths;
ENHANCE their skills through education, exposure and experience;
EMPOWER them to do meaningful work;
EVALUATE them on a truthful and timely basis;
ENCOURAGE them as much as humanly possible

If you do those six things, your employees will feel the LOVE and will stay with you forever. If you don’t, they won’t.

For more detail on each spoke in the magical wheel, click here.

This was originally published on Manpower Group’s Employment Blawg.