Study reveals why your employees are quitting

From stagnating skills to poor pay-packet, one new survey is offering insight into the real reasons workers look elsewhere.

BY Nicola Middlemiss 15 Feb 2017

A competitive salary and impressive work life balance may sound like the perfect job but – according to one new survey – it still might not be enough to keep your best employees.

“People want to be challenged, they want new and exciting work, and they want the opportunity for their career to move forward,” says Jason Walker, managing director of Hays New Zealand.

Walker’s comments come after the recruitment firm published findings from its recent survey in which over 1,500 people were questioned about what makes them look for a different job.

The most common answer, cited by 61 per cent of respondents, was the desire for more challenging or exciting work, followed closely by a lack of career development at 60 per cent.

The opportunity to improve salary made an appearance in third place (58 per cent) with work-life balance trailing in fourth (54 per cent).

Also cited were a lack of recognition or reward for completed work (43 per cent), a feeling that the current job feels routine and is stagnating existing skills (41 per cent), management’s failure to communicate business objectives to staff (30 per cent), not being involved in decision making (24 per cent) and a lack of performance feedback (23 per cent).

While employees are clearly crying out for professional development and challenging new tasks, the Hays survey found that a worrying number of organisations simply aren’t providing opportunities.

Eleven per cent of employers admitted they don’t align the career development of their staff with the current and future skills their organisation will need to achieve its goals, a further 11 per cent only do so for their top performers and another 10 per cent only do so for future leaders.