Why Do Employees Leave Their Employers?

Friday, October 14, 2011

The traditional means of evaluating retention is to look for the reasons which cause employees to voluntarily quit their jobs. However, last week we examined why employees stay with their employers and explored the concept of “job embeddeddness”, the “web” of attachments which bonds the employee to their current organization.

When Wendy Harman and her co-authors analyzed employee turnover in their 2007 work, “The Psychology of Voluntary Employee Turnover”, they focused on a second concept, that of Lee and Mitchell's “unfolding” model. Unfolding is a trigger event within an employee’s life which causes that employee to question their current employer-employee relationship. It could be job related such as a change in job duties, a new manager or it could be unrelated, such as a spouse’s relocation. It may result from a negative event in the form of a less than desirable performance review or a positive event such as an unexpected external job offer. In any case, unfolding sets in motion a change in the sea-state of the employee’s mental model as it relates to their present employment situation, which eventually leads to a job change.

The “unfolding model” puts forth the processes in which the employee must now evaluate their current employer-employee relationship. What are the consequences of staying? What are the consequences of leaving? What are the trades offs, higher salary, longer commute? As with any relationship, there could be both positive as well as negative outcomes to whichever course of action is taken. While unfolding presents an image of a rational and logical employee methodologically weighting the pros and con’s of staying or going, behavioral economics paints another picture entirely.

Behavioral economics tells us that not only employees, but individuals in general; do not always function as the rational beings we might perceive them to be. In fact, individuals may at times act in completely irrational manners to their own self detriment and in the case of employees, to that of their employers. As humans, we have a tendency to be “overconfidence, optimism, and extrapolation” about our current and future circumstances.

Combine the unfolding model with behavioral economics and we have the potential for some employees to see greener pastures on the other side of the fence. Thus employees will uproot themselves and families to move across the country with the overconfidence, optimism, and extrapolation that all things will be better with their new employer. Unfortunately, this often occurs without forethought and planning and on settling into their new job many employees discover they may have traded one set of issues for new ones.

Organizations may not be able to prevent every unfolding event from occurring, however, employers can identify and track their high performers and provide an optimum work environment. Designing positions which both challenge as well as develop potential future organizational leaders, rotational assignments which broaden the individual’s knowledge and scope within the company, mentoring relationships which help employees avoid certain relationship pitfalls; are all time tested methods of strengthening the organizational bond, i. e., . job embeddeddness.