Holding Top Talent
June 18 2008
Research explores why people leave jobs and how to retain best performers
Why do employees leave?
What motivates good employees to stay?
Some possible answers are revealed through research by ILR Assistant Professor John Hausknecht and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Harrah's Entertainment, where 2,500 hospitality employees were surveyed after leaving their jobs.
Feedback from hourly, salaried and managerial employees has human resources implications including:
- Incompetent, incompatible or insensitive supervisors were the fourth leading cause of job departures by high performers, but were the most important cause of job departures by low performers.
- High performers leave for other jobs if they are not rewarded well for their work, do not have adequate advancement opportunities or are not using their skills.
- Low performers leave jobs because of incompatible work hours, heavy workloads and absenteeism policies.
The findings, said Hausknecht, a member of the Human Resource Studies Department at the ILR School, "Offer new ideas about retaining the people who bring the most to your organization."
Employers can begin building a strategy for retaining high performers, Hausknecht said, by:
- Developing exit interviews/questionnaires which help identify why they quit.
- Publicizing/restructuring career ladders to motivate employees seeking advancement.
The 2007 report, Why High and Low Performers Leave and What They Find Elsewhere: Job Performance Effects on Employment Transitions, can be read at http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrswp/466/.
