EntryLevel Capstone Project (EMPLOYEE ATTRITION)

I enrolled in the EntryLevel Virtual internship around July and we were told to choose any case study of our choice as our capstone project.

Well, that was a bit tough for me cause I did not have anything in mind. So I decided on HR analytics. A lot of the work in HR is based on ‘gut feeling’, doing things a certain way because we’ve always done it that way. HR doesn’t have a reputation of bringing in the big bucks or playing a numbers game like sales or finance.

HR analytics can help HR teams monitor employee performance and engagement to reduce turnover and build a more productive workforce. Happy employees = High productivity and more money!

Project Description

Starting with the introduction, I was given a scenario where I was an HR analyst working for IBM. I have been asked to present data on employee attrition and uncover the factors that lead to it.

If you would like to see the Tableau visualization,click here

Problem

Employee attrition occurs when the size of your workforce diminishes over time due to unavoidable factors such as employee resignation for personal or professional reasons. It is the silent killer that can swiftly disable even the most successful and stable of organizations in a shockingly spare amount of time.Understanding the motivations behind employee attrition is the essential first step in understanding the problem and properly addressing it before substantial, long-lasting damage is caused to any organization.

The data used in this case is the total employee data and it is a fictional data set created by IBM data scientists.

My Role

This is where I come into the picture, I needed to identify the trends by analyzing the data containing the attrited employees

But before analyzing the data, I asked a few questions to myself: -

• What could cause employees to leave, was it voluntary or involuntary?
• What is the impact of the problem not being solved?
• What steps can be taken to avoid employee attrition in the future or at the very least, minimize it?

Design

The data was dirty at first, some columns had numbers and that was not supposed to be, I changed the numbers to words for better understanding. I used Tableau to visualize the data because it offers new approaches to radically improve the ability to fetch hidden acumens

Findings and Analysis

There were a total of 1470 employees

237 are attrited employees which makes attrition rate about 16%. 63% were male and 37% were females.

Let’s take a look at their background in more detail

We can observe here that attrition is highest around the 26–35 age range with a 49% attrition rate. This could indicate that since they are young, they could either be job testing, going back to further education and career advancements or even getting married.

Let us go further into their education

Here, it shows that a big percentage of the employees were graduates that had completed their Bachelor's degree.

Were they satisfied with their work environment?

30.4% left due to the low satisfaction of the work environment. The work environment could be in terms of the physical environment, learning opportunities, and even feedback. Employees thrive in an environment that channels timely feedback to them.

Or satisfied with their jobs…

27.8% left cause of low job satisfaction

Their job levels…

This shows the level of attrition by job levels with Level 1 being the lowest, possibly Entry level and level 5 being the highest, possibly Executive level. Here, this shows that employees in the Entry-level have the highest attrition rate. Entry-level jobs are less likely to be the dream job for most of them, some might be job testing also.

Could it be because they worked more than the standard hours?

Working overtime might be one of the factors that lead to employee attrition, this chart shows a high percentage of the attrited employees is due to working overtime.

Working overtime may increase the level of stress and decrease the productivity of the employee. In the long run, the quality of the work may be affected.

The departments…

Considering the number of employees, attrition is more in the sales department.

Their Work-life balance

Only 10.5% left because of a bad work-life balance.

How much were they paid?

A large percentage were paid below $5000. This could be because of the number of years they have spent with the company, their job level also.

This chart shows that employees with less than 10 years experience at the company tend to leave after about two to five years without any promotion.

How close/far is the distance to work?

Here, we can see that employees close to home have a high attrition rate. This is surprising as I initially thought the reverse was the case.

The Conclusion and Recommendations.

I came to the following conclusions after completing all of the analyses: -

• Most attrition is from entry level positions. Create long term career or training paths
• Employees with a Bachelor’s degree tend to leave more and this might be due to low monthly income, wanting to advance their career levels by going to school to get masters and Doctor degrees.
• Employees that worked overtime have a high attrition rate. Employees should not work more than their standard hours.
• Low income is also a factor that leads to employee attrition.
• Most of the attrited employees worked close to home, team activities can be organized, that is, game room or recharge room.
• Employees tend to leave after a period of years without promotion. Improve promotion policy.