Why Employees Quit: Resilience Statistics [Original Research]

An unhappy employee will start looking for a new job.

So building resilience in the workplace is key to a strong workforce!

To help inform our Resilience courses and keep up to date with current trends, we conducted new original research.

We looked at what the key drivers of employees actually starting to look for a new job are.

Our survey gave one overwhelming answer – a lack of control.

Research & Statistics – Why Employees Quit

As part of our research, we asked employees how often they left work feeling that things were under control.

This includes people that struggle to manage their stress, and as a result end up with a pile of work they cannot handle.

The results are contained in the graphs below.

The link between how often an employee feels that their work is under control and how likely they are to be looking for a new job is direct.

The correlation between the two figures is over 90% for this graph. 

By contrast, while happy employees do feel that their work is out of control, they don’t do so often.

It would appear that when employees feel out of control for the majority of the time (3 days per week or more) then the stress that that generates will drive them to look for a new job.

Learning what resilience is and how it influences their career will make a big difference to people leaving their jobs.

How Does This Fit With Research?

Our finding is a piece of empirical evidence of a link between control and the intention of leaving a job.

Does this match with other findings?

The short answer is yes, as there is strong research that links feelings of control with lower stress and higher resilience.

If managers put more effort into creating systems that can boost workplace resilience, they could minimise these feelings while creating strong employees.

In the sections below, we look further at the individual pieces of this chain.

The Link Between Control & Stress

The link between a feeling of control and stress is well established in numerous studies (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3).

People who have an internal locus of control feel that they have agency and a degree of control over events in their life suffer less stress and anxiety than people with an external locus of control.

The difference in their way of perceiving events leads to different ways of reacting to events. 

People experiencing the same challenging set of circumstances can deal with them proactively, seeing them as a chance to grow and develop, or passively, as another example of life being unfair.

Some people view failure as a learning experience and part of life. Others view it as a catastrophe that they won’t be able to recover from.

Guess which one finds failure more stressful?!!  

The Link Between Resilience And The Intention To Quit A Job

All jobs have their ups and downs. It is how people deal with them that is crucial.

People who find the downs very stressful are more likely to struggle psychologically, and also far more likely to quit for obvious reasons.

Conversely, people who show good resilience can find ways to thrive despite the challenges they are facing are far less likely to quit, conversely.

The Link Between Stress & Resilience

The link between stress and resilience is also very well established, less resilient people deal with their stress much worse.

People who find life’s challenges less stressful are more resilient.

It doesn’t matter whether they naturally have a positive outlook or they use techniques to cultivate a positive mindset when things are hard, the result is the same.

They are able to keep going when things are tough and find a way through their difficulties. 

Final Thoughts

Although intuitively it makes sense that employees who consistently feel out of control are more likely to leave, it is interesting to see how strong the correlation is.

Obviously, this link merits further work, as this was a relatively small study.