Two themes that people leave without answering - Why do people leave? 3/3
In spring 2024, we conducted a survey comparing the responses of those who left and those who stayed. The data consisted of 85 500 responses to various staff surveys over a 6-year period. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the main differences in the responses were found in questions related to learning and development. You can read more about this here. Sometimes, however, it is the case that no differences in responses can be found between those who left and those who stayed. Instead, we need to look only at the response rate.
A declining response rate is a well-known indicator that all is not well. People may be too tired and overwhelmed to respond. People may feel that there is no point in responding if nothing is done about the issues raised. Distrust of the employer and the anonymity of the survey may be so great that there is no desire to respond at all. Or people may be so eager to move on to the next job that they no longer want to contribute to the development of the current one. Our research revealed even more detailed information about the importance of response rates.
In fact, in certain questions, the answers themselves did not differ in any way between those who left and those who stayed! Instead, there was a very significant difference in the response rate.
For some questions, the response rate tells you much more about the exit risk than the answer.
Two themes where a low response rate should raise alarms
In two themes, the low response rate was more indicative of the intention to leave than the response itself. These were stress management and perceived meaningfulness of work.
Workload management is included in our question bank under the main category "coping at work". Load management includes statements such as:
My working hours are sufficient.
You can recover from work during your holidays.
I cope well with the social pressures of my job.
I have time to do my job well.
Work is distributed fairly and equitably.
I can manage my work within the specified working hours.
In these questions, there was no difference between the answers of those who left and those who stayed! In contrast, the response rate for those who left was 41 percentage points lower. Using Bayes' theorem, a person who does not answer the questions related to load management is 3.3 times more likely to leave compared to a person who does answer these questions. That's quite a difference!
"A person who fails to answer questions about load management has 3.3 times the risk of leaving."
Another theme where the drop in response rate is more indicative of leaving than the response itself is the perceived importance of the job. This subcategory can be found in our question bank under the main category of job satisfaction. It includes statements such as the following:
I am proud of my work
I know the purpose of my work.
I am proud of the work I have done.
I find my work meaningful.
I feel that what we do is important.
I consider my own work to be important and significant.
My expertise helps the customer.
On questions about the relevance of work, leavers scored 7 percentage points lower than stayers. The difference is of course some, but not massive. Instead, they had 30 percentage points lower response rates. If a person does not answer the questions on job relevance, they are 2.1 times more likely to leave compared to a person who answers these questions.
What did we learn?
The answers don't always tell you what's on people's minds. It is also important to look at the response rate. In particular, it seems that when it comes to questions about the meaningfulness of work and managing workload, a drop in response rates should set alarm bells ringing.
Simply "forcing" people to answer these questions will not, of course, make people stay, but opening up the discussion will allow the grievances to be addressed.
There is a link between managing workload and perceived meaningfulness of work. We know that when people start to feel exhausted, they are the first to lose the experience of meaningfulness. They become cynical and work no longer brings joy. From this point of view, it can be argued that the management of workload is a prerequisite for a sense of meaningfulness. The loss of meaningfulness (or the loss of interest in meaningfulness to the extent that one stops answering these questions) is therefore the result of a failure to manage the workload, which has become too great. This further suggests that when the team and the supervisor notice that the workload results are turning red, it is important to intervene and correct the situation so that it does not get worse and lead to non-response.
Does this result also apply to you?
Probably yes, but if you want to be sure, we can do a similar analysis of your staff survey data. Then you'll know exactly which factors are most important to your retention rate, in which organisational line, for which occupational group and, for example, for which age group. This will enable you to strengthen your retention by "pinpointing" rather than "spot-firing".
For more information on the study, please contact Mikko Ruokojoje, mikko.ruokojoki@vibemetrics.com.
