Top 5 Reasons for Leaving a Job as Reported by Employees

  1. Inadequate compensation: 27%

  2. Lack of career advancement: 19%

  3. Insufficient recognition: 17%

  4. Boredom: 11%

  5. No professional development: 11%

Fifty percent of employers surveyed feel a job offer with an 8% to 15% salary increase from a competitor would be enough to lure away current employees. Yet on average, employers are willing to give an average raise of just 7% to entice employees to stay.

Not surprisingly, employers are aware of the high costs associated with replacing workers due to turnover. Employers across all industries estimate the cost to replace a typical employee due to turnover to average approximately $21,000. Some industries estimate recruitment costs to be well above that figure.

Representatives from the biotech industry estimate replacement costs to run more than $46,000, followed by aerospace and defense at over $30,000 and energy and utilities at slightly over $28,000. To see which industries round out the top five in estimated employee replacement costs view a complete overview of the survey at: http://www.salary.com/docs/resources/JobSatSurvey_08.pdf

The 2007/2008 Job Satisfaction & Retention Survey also illustrated some interesting trends along gender lines. Women place a higher importance on desirable working hours and relationships with managers and co-workers while men list attractive compensation as the most important factor in job satisfaction.

Women vs. Men: Top 5 Reasons for Staying In a Job

                                                        Women          Men

Relationship with co-workers            28%                22%

Relationship with manager                  27%               22%

Desirable working hours                     26%               18%

Attractive benefits                                22%                18%

Attractive compensation                       16%                27%

Salary.com invited a cross-section of individual employees and business representatives from across America to participate in its 2007/2008 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey. Prospective participants received an e-mail containing the survey questionnaire. Participants completed as many sections of the survey as they desired, and then submitted their results to Salary.com electronically. Salary.com compensation professionals reviewed the data for consistency and accuracy and excluded data that appeared to be invalid. A total of 7,482 individuals and 245 human resource or other company representatives responded to our survey. Among the individual employee respondents, 7,101 were employed and provided valid responses to the survey questions—the remaining 381 were excluded from all analysis.