The Top 20 Most Common Reasons Why People Choose to Leave Their Jobs – Across my years in the recruitment industry, I often felt like a psychotherapist while listening to the reasons why people change jobs. Why a psychotherapist, you ask? Because it’s mostly the same few reasons why everyone changes jobs, and these reasons seem to stay with each job and company. This is because most people will not say why they left, why they want to leave, or what they do not like about their current job, and companies will usually do nothing about this aspect as it’s “normal” for people to leave, they say. This is a sad truth that most seem to ignore, and what happens here is that people just jump from one job to another, sometimes with the risk of being called “job hoppers.”
So, if you have the bad luck of not getting into the right company a few times, you will end up being tagged like a product on the shelf. Someone who is not stable and doesn’t know what they want in life
At the end of the day, as employees, we all want a stable job that we love, and as employers, we want a fantastic team to reach a common goal and share growth and prosperity.
Then, how can we address the elephant in the room? By first accepting that there will always be things that need to be improved and can be improved, rather than ignoring them and hoping the next hire will be blind and miss the obvious,
The reasons why most people leave their jobs are listed below (in no particular order).This is the data accumulated from hundreds of phone and video screenings conducted across years of recruitment.
The Top 20 Most Common Reasons Why People Choose to Leave Their Jobs
Reasons are:
- Lack of job satisfaction: People need meaning and purpose. They can only chase a dream if they can be part of it, as opposed to just executing orders. This brings them fulfillment.
- Poor working conditions: People will hate their jobs if the working conditions are unsafe or unhealthy, or if they are subject to harassment or discrimination.
- Unfair treatment: Everyone wants to feel treated fairly when it comes to paying, receiving benefits, or having opportunities for advancement.
- Unsupportive management: toxic managers who either ignore their staff or are afraid of the team members outgrowing them. As a result, these managers will be unresponsive and unsupportive toward the needs and concerns of the team.
- Lack of work-life balance: Everyone has a life after work, so a job that takes all your daily energy or leads to long working hours leads to burnout while depriving everyone of their personal pursuits.
- Boredom: monotonous work where nothing changes, ever! A lack of variety will sap any person’s energy.
- Lack of recognition: Each one of us wants recognition and to know we are valued in our workplace and that we are doing well, great, or even fantastic. helps the soul!
- Uncertain expectations: People will be confused if they do not have a clear set of expectations from them or if their job duties change frequently.
- Stress: How many of us saw job descriptions stating “resilient to stress”? No one wants to constantly feel overwhelmed or stressed.
- Limited opportunities for growth: growth is one of the most important motivators for people in any situation, and some companies never offer this possibility. Also, people should be able to move from one job to another after a while to keep their minds busy.
- Poor communication: A lot of companies talk about communication skills and transparency in interviews, which they completely lack after the employee starts the job.
- Inefficient processes: Certain jobs have old, slow, and inefficient processes in place. Some even live by the saying “we’ve always done things this way” or “if it works, don’t touch it.” We live in a time of speed, when things change and adapt incredibly fast.
- Unreasonable workload: unrealistic delivery times when the company sells something without considering that someone has to sacrifice to deliver. A lot of companies do this for the profit, promising 50% faster something, which only means someone else has to work 100% harder for the same pay, otherwise “someone else” will love their job.
- Lack of autonomy: micro-management in mid-senior roles while never having freedom for decision-making
- Unsupportive colleagues: What is a team without the people that support you, cooperate with you, and always push you forward for mutual growth and evolution? It’s called a “toxic environment,” where you have to always watch your back.
- Unclear career path: A clear career path or plan for professional development is a must in every workplace for someone to have a sense of direction. Otherwise, how can they see themselves anywhere in “5 years from now”?
- Poor benefits: insufficient or inadequate benefits given by the company they work for. Yes, sometimes this can only mean a good salary, but most times it won’t.
- Poor company reputation: People will avoid companies with a bad reputation, whether that’s in the related industry or the broader community. A Google search will be brutally honest and ruthless in 0.6 seconds (the average time to get an answer on a search) when it comes to finding out if you want to work there or not.
- No room for creativity: there is zero room for creativity when new ideas are never considered. Just like in most schools, where creativity is sacrificed for the greater good of the people, It reminds us of communism, and we all know how that turned out in every single scenario.
- Poorly compensated: How many of us were “loyal” to a company that gave us two salary increases totaling 10% over a 5-year span? It doesn’t even beat inflation. This is just an example. Everyone wants to be adequately compensated for their efforts and time.
These are the top 20 reasons why people are unhappy in their workplace, and unsurprisingly, they coincide with the reasons why people change jobs. When people quit their job, they really quit working with their “boss.”
At the end of the day, we all have to work together toward a greater goal that involves two sides: the employee and the company (employer).
- Employees deserve to be happy and start working with a real smile on their faces, regardless of the job they have. And this is done only by considering all or as many aspects as possible in order to give them a purpose and a future.
- The company needs to make a profit and offer that future to its most important asset, the people who work there, and make the magic happen while still being profitable.
Addressing these topics and finding the right solutions will only benefit both sides and ensure a prosperous and stress-free life for everyone.
If you liked the content, please like and share it. It’s all for the good of the community, meaning us, our friends, our families, and everyone else we don’t know. We all deserve to be happy.
PS: if you think I’ve missed any other reasons, please feel free to comment below.
