26% employees in India at risk of changing jobs next year: BCG report

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“The key will be for employers to prioritize and invest in the most optimal way to understand what really matters to their employees. The survey is timely and aptly called “What Really Matters At Work, And Why We Should Care” because there is an urgent need for employers around the world to help their employees find the right balance between functional drivers such as pay and job hours, versus emotional factors such as workplace respect, fairness, and recognition,” said Neetu Chitkara, MD & Partner, leader People & Organizational Practice, BCG India.

However, when employees were asked to make choices between different aspects of work—simulating a purchase decision—emotional needs crept into the top five. Pay and hours still dominated as the top two choices, but feeling fairly treated and respected, feeling like I have job security, and doing work I enjoy—all emotional needs—moved into third, fourth, and fifth places respectively.

Most significantly, when more than 20 work attributes from the survey were correlated with employees’ stated intention to stay in or leave their jobs, functional benefits—including pay—dropped toward the bottom of the list, and emotional factors dominated the top five most important factors: job security, being treated fairly and respected, enjoyable work, feeling valued and appreciated, and feeling supported. If companies want to keep their employees, they need to meet these emotional needs.

Significance of managers

According to BCG’s analysis of the survey data, the most powerful lever for delivering these emotional needs is managers. They have the most influence over their employees’ day-to-day experiences—whether positive or negative.

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In fact, great managers are associated with a 72 percent reduction in attrition when comparing employees who are very satisfied with their managers with those who are very unsatisfied. This was also the lever with the strongest influence on attrition risk across all surveyed countries, except for India where it was the second strongest.

Setting retention aside, that same employee comparison shows that great managers are also associated with a 3.2x increase in employee motivation, a 13.9x increase in job satisfaction, and a significant increase in feelings of inclusion.

“Managers also play a key role in companies achieving their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals,” said Gabrielle Novacek, a managing director and partner at BCG, and co-leader of the team behind the study. “We know that inclusion is critical if we want to attract, engage, and retain a diverse workforce. Reporting that they are satisfied with their manager correlated with employees’ feelings of inclusion rising by 36 points on our BCG BLISS index, which stands for Bias-Free, Leadership, Inclusion, Safety, and Support, and is a comprehensive, statistically rigorous tool that measures the drivers of inclusion and the value that it delivers,” she said.

Further, strong dissatisfaction with managers was linked to a doubling of attrition risk, with 56 percent of employees with that sentiment at risk, compared with a global average of 28 percent. Clearly, making a significant investment in upskilling all managers and incentivizing them to excel in their roles is the most impactful investment companies can make to retain their best workers. It goes beyond just training. The survey results show that creating material step changes in managers’ capabilities drives significant value.

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The next three levers most correlated with satisfying employees’ emotional needs—among 300 different workplace characteristics ranging from upskilling opportunities to working model and leadership sentiment—were (1) supportive leaders, (2) access to resources to do one’s work, and (3) access to opportunity regardless of background. All three had an impact very similar to having a great manager when taken in isolation—and pulling all four levers together reduces attrition risk from the baseline global average by about two-thirds, from 28 percent to 9 percent.

BCG’s research underscores a fundamental shift in the employer-employee dynamic. Today, many people are on the lookout for better job opportunities, and it is time for leaders to start treating their employees like customers. This means companies need to use all their customer-focused capabilities such as deep discovery, sophisticated needs assessment, segmentation, personalization, design thinking, and true employee journeys. It’s now clear that it’s not just factors like pay and benefits that matter to employees when deciding to stay in or leave a job—their emotional needs play the dominant role, and leaders who don’t tune into that fact do so at their own peril.