While many industries would agree that the turnover rates witnessed during the Great Resignation have slowed down in the last year, employees are still more than willing to
ADP Research Institute, which focuses on labor market and employee performance research, analyzed the job histories of over 1.2 million Americans, looking at employee commitment and retention in their quarterly
This means promotions lead to a nearly two-thirds increased risk of
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"My manager and I were talking about our own careers and we had both been promoted by our previous employer and used that promotion as leverage to get a job elsewhere," says Hanowell. "So we wanted to see if this phenomenon was important across the labor market."
Notably, after someone receives their first promotion, they are only more likely to leave up until the six-month mark, when the risk gap narrows. Still, that leaves employees plenty of time to potentially seek another employer.
The risk only jumps if employees land their first promotion while at a job that requires little training or education. In fact, this group of employees was 52% more likely to leave in the first month after being promoted. Hanowell theorizes that these employees may often feel unprepared to take on a new position.
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"If you get promoted into management from, let's say a frontline warehousing job, and you're now responsible for five or 10 people with no support from your employers, it might stress you out," says Hanowell. "You might think it's time to leave."
And yet, higher rank (and presumably more education and training) can also translate to a higher risk of leaving, underlines Hanowell. For first and third-level managers, promotions increased their chances of leaving by 100% or more after the first month, compared to if they hadn't been promoted at all. But if an employee went from an individual contributor to a manager, their chances of leaving fell closer to the 10% mark.
"When you think about somebody who is an individual contributor, and you give them an opportunity to move into management, that might be a signal to them that they have an opportunity to develop their career with you," says Hanowell. "If you have somebody who already has that management experience, and they're moving into a higher level of management, they might think this is when I am as marketable as I will ever be, and perhaps it's time for me to look at other opportunities."
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Despite this, Hanowell asks employers not to view promotions negatively, but instead reflect on their own work culture and whether employees are receiving the
"There's no reason why an employer should stop promoting people," says Hanowell. "My advice to employers is to support people within their career development and within the next level of management that they achieve."
On a larger scale, employees aren't as happy with their employers as they were last year. ADP's employee motivation and commitment index (EMC), which measures worker loyalty, found that the index fell to 100 in August, with its peak being 121 in December of 2022, when job growth and remote work were still going strong. Any value less than 100 means employees' sense of commitment and motivation is diminishing, while a value over 100 means the opposite — it seems many employers are at a crossroads.
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The EMC will change across employers and industries for better or for worse by ADP's next report. It's up to employers to sway the index one way or another, underlines Hanowell.
"Employee motivation and commitment aren't fixed traits people have," says Hanowell. "This can change over time, depending on the work you do and what sort of company you work for."
