8.3: Retention Statistics
Retention Statistics
Review the information from Gallup's Global Indicator for Employee Retention. What information stood out to you? What would you do as a manager to improve the numbers at your organization? Do you think you can accurately predict the likelihood of an employee looking or leaving?
Indicator: Employee Retention & Attraction
Employee Retention & Attraction
What We Measure
We measure employee retention and attraction trends, as well as employee perceptions of their current job climate, to help organizations more effectively retain and attract top talent.
Intent to Leave
To what extent are you currently looking for a different job than the one you have now?
Watching For or Actively Seeking New Job - 51%
Why Do Employee Retention Metrics and Attraction Research Matter?
Delving into employees’ openness to new job opportunities reveals their intent to leave (or stay at) their current organization.
As leaders seek to retain and attract talent, understanding more about employee perceptions of the job climate and why they choose to leave or join an organization is critical . Employers can evaluate how these details relate to their own culture to create strategies for curtailing turnover, attracting top talent and keeping their star employees from being wooed away.
State of the Global Job Climate
Would you say now is a good time or a bad time to find a quality job?
Notice that after reaching a record high in of 70% in mid-2022, U.S. employees' belief that now is a good time to find a quality job steadily declined to 2019 levels by mid-2023. Much like the cooling job market, this reversing trend may signify a return to "normalcy" after record hiring surges, or it may signal early signs of trouble ahead amid recession fears.
Likelihood to Recommend and Intent to Leave
Employees can be some of your best brand ambassadors or worst critics, influencing your potential customers and talent. Would your employees recommend your organization as a great place to work?
Employees who are watching for new job opportunities or actively looking for another job may be ready to leave your organization.
Top Reasons for Leaving a Job
Why are employees leaving their employer? We asked U.S. employees to identify their primary reason for leaving their previous job.
"Pay/Benefits" is the most common single reason employees left their job in 2023, despite that response decreasing the most since 2022 among all individual factors. Yet, "Pay/Benefits" was identified only 16% of the time as the primary reason people left their job -- meaning organizations need to focus on a different set of employee needs to prevent the other 84% of departures.
Looking at the top reasons in isolation can be misleading. When we classify all of the reasons people give for leaving an employer into larger categories, as shown in the table below, we see that the theme of "Engagement and Culture" is by far the most prominent (41%), followed by the theme of "Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance" (28%).
Together, these two areas of dissatisfaction make up 69% of the total reasons employees left their employer in 2023. That means four times as many people left their job due to "Engagement and Culture" or "Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance" reasons, compared with the number of people who primarily left for better "Pay/Benefits."
Attributes That Attract Employees to a Different Organization
Creating an inspiring employee value proposition is about more than fixing what is dissatisfying your workforce.
Effective employee attraction and retention strategies require both an understanding of what people are looking for in a great career and the follow-through of bringing that employee value proposition to life.
Below is a list of the top factors that attract people to their next job. Note the similarities between the reasons employees leave a job, as shown above, and the importance of the factors that most often attract them to an opportunity somewhere else.
Leaders and managers should capture these types of insights for their organization through pulse surveys, exit surveys and stay interviews to assess their current employee experience and hone their employee value proposition.
What else draws employees to new opportunities? Below is the full list of factors that Gallup studies, ranked by importance, to reveal what matters most to employees who are considering taking a job with a different employer.
Source: "Gallup: Indicators" , Gallup website, 2024