What was the primary reason that you left your last role?
It’s imperative as a hiring partner to really understand candidate’s motivations, it can often mean the difference between making a hire or not. Of course there are many factors as to why employees leave their jobs but there are a few reasons that are consistently mentioned. So, we asked our LinkedIn network the question: What was the primary reason that you left your last role?
Bad relationship with the manager
The top voted reason for why people left their last job – a poor relationship with management (33%) – a common cause of candidates looking for new roles on the hiring market. Research from TotalJobs, a popular job board, cited that 49% of professionals revealed that they have quit a job as result of a sour relationship with their boss.
There’s an old saying that you don’t leave a job, you leave a manager – which still rings true. A report by Visier, a people analytics company, found that 38% of professionals even stayed longer in a job due to a positive relationship with their manager.
It goes to show that good or bad management hugely affects the working experiences of professionals and can make or break a person’s potential future within a company.
Poor development opportunities
28% of our LinkedIn voters chose ‘poor development opportunities’ as what caused them to leave their last role. According to Totaljobs – 68% of professionals have changed jobs in the past because of a lack of learning and development opportunities.
Not only does poor development opportunities refer to a lack of possibility for promotions, but also the absence of training and learning opportunities – with 9 out of 10 people wanting their employer to offer more training courses to develop new skills.
Weak compensation
Not far behind, weak compensation got 25% of the vote for the primary reason behind changing jobs.
According to TotalJobs, half (47%) of workers across the UK are dissatisfied with their income and 63% admit they run out of money before their next pay day. Although money isn’t everything, with the rise of living costs – especially in the UK, these figures could rise further.
The results of our online poll also reported that 14% of people voted that the primary reason they left their last job was ‘Other’. There are many variables, sometimes compounding together, that encourage people to switch roles.
In a recent article, Forbes references a study that found some other key reasons people leave roles; toxic company culture (62%), lack of healthy work-life boundaries (49%) and not allowing remote work (43%) among others.
Obviously people will leave companies, you can’t stop everyone but understanding what the main push factors are is critical to a successful retention policy.
Our top tip to mitigate the risk of employees leaving is transparency. Having strong and open channels of communication where employers and employees can negotiate and find ways to improve these points can be essential to preemptively action and reducing the risk of losing talent.
