Turnover: Why Do Employees Leave in 2019 [POLL]

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) indicates that voluntary quits have surpassed pre- Great Recession levels. This turnover shouldn’t be a surprise. We’ve been talking about the shift to a candidate-driven market for quite some time. 

What does surprise me are the reasons employees are leaving. On one hand, we have organizations reciting the old mantra, “People don’t leave jobs; they leave bad managers.” On another, I see articles like this one from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) that says the majority of people leave for money.

Last year, we ran a turnover poll asking why employees start looking for a new job. It was in response to an article I ran across from Harvard Business Review titled “Why People Really Quit Their Jobs”. The HBR article is still an interesting read worth checking out. But it reminded me that the reasons employees leave can change over time. 

So, I thought it might be worth asking the question again: What prompts employees to start looking for a new opportunity? Now, I realize this isn’t the same as the actual reason someone leaves. But if companies know the reason an employee starts looking, maybe they will proactively do something about it.