Why do employees quit?

It has been a tough month at my workplace. Tight deadlines, unhelpful vendors, and we have seen a number of employees resign for various reasons. Personally, I have no plans to look for greener pastures at this point in time, but it has gotten me wondering about why employees quit. This article contains one such analysis of typical exit interviews.

To do this, we reviewed notes from exit interviews, cross referenced annual reviews and ultimately came up with 178 voluntary terminations from people that would have been considered in the top 20%.

To try and keep focused on macro issues, we consolidated the responses and placed them into categories:
- Money
- Unchallenged
- Too Challenged
- Dead Company
- Watch your Levels (and the BS)

What makes this article even more interesting is that it is not a general survey of employees, but rather of the highest performers within organizations. This means that it is a survey of employees who are plugged in, working well, and generally would be expected to be among the best fits for their jobs and to be the most highly compensated.