How data can predict which employees are about to quit

Rather than relying on exit interviews and their comparisons to occasional employee surveys to determine engagement, organizations can turn instead to big data and advanced analytics to identify those workers at greatest risk of quitting.

A new Harvard Business Review article outlines how applying machine learning algorithms to turnover data and employee information can provide a much more accurate picture of workplace satisfaction. This measure of "turnover propensity" comprised two main indicators: turnover shocks, which are organizational and personal events that cause workers to reconsider their jobs, and job embeddedness, which describes an employee's social ties in their workplace and interest in the work they do.

Though achieving this kind of "proactive anticipation" will require a sizable investment of time and effort to develop the necessary data and algorithms, the payoff will likely be worth it: "Leaders can proactively engage valued employees at risk of leaving through interviews, to better understand how the firm can increase the odds that they stay," per HBR.