Why do people leave? (1/3)

On Thursday 23 May, we published the results of our Why People Leave survey. They both confirmed what is already known and highlighted something new. This blog contains the first highlights of the results. 

How was the research carried out?

The survey was carried out by analysing 1 000 000 responses from 85 500 people to various staff surveys over the last 6 years. The analysis looked at how the response of those who left differed from those who stayed. The data is truly massive by Finnish standards.

The nature of the data is such that the result does not reveal causalities (I left because) but correlations (having left, at the same time having responded like this). With common sense we can conclude that there is of course a link between these things, but strictly speaking the result cannot tell us the causes, it tells us about the differences between the response rates and responses of those who left and those who left.

What did you find?

The responses were analysed using our question bank's glossary. It consists of main-level keywords and lower-level keywords. 

Among the main themes, the three themes where there was the most difference between the responses of those who left and those who stayed were:

1) Learning and development

2) Job satisfaction

3) Local management

Learning and development took precedence over both job satisfaction issues and issues of local management!

When we looked at the lower level keywords, the biggest difference in response was found in the questions related to these three keywords:

1) Recommendation

2) Learning and development practices

3) Management

It's certainly no surprise that recommendation is number one - you don't recommend your own job when you're about to leave.

In contrast, the rise of issues related to learning and development practices to 2nd place is more recent. Several large studies have been published around the world where this emerges, but in Finland, with such a large data set, similar results are unlikely to have been found before. Of course, many people have first-hand experience of this :)

What makes this even more interesting is that it is about learning and development practices, not, for example, about satisfaction with one's own development.

Under the main theme of learning and development, our question bank contains the following sub-themes: 1) Enjoyment of knowledge, 2) Satisfaction with own development, 3) Learning and development practices, 4) Learning culture, 5) Learning structures. Of these, it was the issues related to sub-theme 3) Learning and development practices that emerged from the analysis.

For example, there are statements such as:

"We are developing our work through systematic experimentation."

"We hold regular retrospectives."

"We are familiar with different problem-solving methods."

"My line manager encourages me to improve the work of our team."

"I have regular discussions with my line manager or another person about my skills and learning needs."

So this is the question where there is the biggest difference between the answers of those who left and those who stayed!

What did we learn?

Learning and development are at the top of the list for workplace attraction and retention. Professionals simply cannot afford to stay long in a workplace where their skills are not developing.

Workplaces now have a strong incentive not only to ask employees if they are happy with their own development, but also to ensure that there are ways of learning and developing work together in everyday life.

I can't resist reminding you that we have an assessment tool to identify the learning culture and infrastructure of the workplace :) You can find more information here.

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.