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Employee Retention
Problem Part 1
Muhammad Rizaldy · Follow
6 min read · Aug 25, 2023

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Problem Statement
One of the most important tasks in Human
Resources Department is to improve
employee retention. Why does it become
important task? To hire a new employee is
expensive:

1. It takes a lot of money. According to

Glassdoor study, in US they have spent
around $4,000 to hire a new employee.
[1]

2. It takes a lot of time. According to

Society for Human Resource
Management, it takes around 36 days
or 1 month to hire a new employee. [2]

Beside those two reasons, when the

employee leaves the company, there is a
hole in the position that is he left. It would
affect the company’s performance. So, it
becomes obvious that we have to ensure
that the employees will stay in our
company.

I would like to use dataset from Kaggle.

Even though, the data is dummy, hopefully
the method that I use will give an
illustration to solve the problem.

You can get the data from the link below:

IBM HR Analytics Employee Attrition &

Performance | Kaggle

The dataset has 1470 observations with 35

columns/features. First, we would like to
calculate the employee retention rate using
equation (1).

The dataset has 1233 employees who

stayed. So, the employee retention rate is
83.88%. The employee retention rate is
high but it’s not good enough. In general, a
good employee retention rate is above
90%.

In order to improve the employee

retention rate. We have to understand the
dataset. Let’s deep dive the dataset.

Deep Dive the Dataset

1. The relation between Age and Attrition

Figure 1. The Bar Chart of Age

Figure 1 shows us the relation between Age

and Attrition. Blue bar indicates the
employees who left. On the other hand,
orange bar indicates the employees who
stayed. We could see that the younger
employees tend to leave the company. It
makes sense because the young tend to
seek experiences. While the older
employees tend to get stable life. That’s
why the older employees tend to stay.
Especially, at the ages of 34 and 35,
generally they are trying to build the
family and rise the children.

2. The relation between Marital Status and

Attrition

Figure 2. The Bar Chart of Marital Status

Figure 2 shows us the relation between

Marital Status and Attrition. Blue bar
indicates the employees who left. On the
other hand, orange bar indicates the
employees who stayed. Single employees
have a tendency to leave the company
rather than married employees and
divorced employees. Furthermore,
married employees tend to stay in the
company. It makes sense because they
tend to want to have a stable life.

3. The relation between Job Role and

Attrition

Figure 3. The Bar Chart of employees who left group by Job

Role

Figure 3 shows us the employees who left

based on their job role. The top 3 job role
that tend to leave are Laboratory
Technician, Sales Executive, and Research
Scientist. On the other hand, the bottom 3
are Healthcare Representative, Manager,
and Research Director.

Figure 4. The Bar Chart of employees who stayed group by Job

Role

Figure 4 shows us the employees who

stayed based on their job role. The top 3
job role that tend to leave are Sales
Executive, Research Scientist, and
Laboratory Technician. It is interesting
because we have the same top 3 job role.
Probably, job role did not significantly
affect the employee retention.
Furthermore, the bottom 3 are Research
Director, Sales Representative, and Human
Resources.

4. The relation between Job Involvement

and Attrition

Figure 5. The Bar Chart of Job Involvement

Figure 5 shows us the relation between Job

Involvement and Attrition. The scale of Job
Involvement is 1 to 4. Number 1 stands for
low job involvement, number 2 for
medium, number 3 for high, and number 4
stands for very high job involvement.

The employees who have high job

involvement dominate the distribution.
Furthermore, the distribution of the
employees who left and the distribution of
the employees who stayed are slightly
similar.

5. The relation between Job Level and

Attrition

Figure 6. The Bar Chart of Job Level

Figure 6 shows us the relation between Job

Level and Attrition. The scale of Job Level
is 1 to 5. Number 1 stands for entry-level,
number 2 for experienced/senior, number
3 for first-level management, number 4
stands for middle-level management, and
number 5 stands for senior management.

The majority of the employees who left are

at the entry-level. It makes sense because
generally they tend to seek another
opportunity or experience to grow.
Sometimes, they want higher salaries or
higher position.

6. The relation between Monthly Income

and Attrition

Figure 7. The boxplot of Monthly Income

Figure 7 shows us the boxplot of Monthly

Income. We could see, the employees who
stayed have higher monthly income. So,
probably monthly income could affect the
employee retention.

8. The relation between Job Satisfaction

and Attrition

Figure 8. The Bar Chart of Job Satisfaction

Figure 8 shows us the job satisfaction of

the employees. The scale of job satisfaction
is 1 to 4, where number 1 stands for low,
number 2 stands for medium, number 3
stands for high, and number 4 stands for
very high. The majority of the employees
who stayed have very high job satisfaction.
Perhaps job satisfaction would be a reason
why the employee stayed.

8. The relation between Distance From

Home and Attrition

Figure 9. The boxplot of Distance From Home

Figure 9 shows us the boxplot of distance

from home to the company. We could see,
the employees who stayed have shorter
distance from home. So, probably distance
from home could affect the employee
retention.

9. The relation between Performance

Rating and Attrition

Figure 10. The Bar Chart of Performance Rating

Figure 10 shows us the performance rating

of the employees. The scale of
performance rating is 1 to 4, where
number 1 stands for low, number 2 stands
for good, number 3 stands for excellent,
and number 4 stands for outstanding. It is
interesting the employee only have rating 3
or 4 which means the employees have high
performance rating both who left and
stayed. So, for the employees who left we
could say it was a loss.

10. The relation between Work Life

Balance and Attrition

Figure 10. The Bar Chart of Work Life Balance

Figure 10 shows us the relation between

Work Life Balance and Attrition. The scale
of Work Life Balance is 1 to 4. Number 1
stands for bad, number 2 for good, number
3 for better, and number 4 stands for best.

The employees who have better work life

balance dominate the distribution both the
employees who left and the employees who
stayed. Furthermore, the distribution of
the employees who left and the
distribution of the employees who stayed
are slightly similar.

They are some representations of the

dataset. For further analysis, I would like to
use Logistic Regression to predict whether
the employee will stay or leave. See you on
the part 2.

Reference:

[1] Glassdoor Team, "How To Calculate

Cost-Per-Hire”, glassdoor.com, July 5th,
2019. [Online]. Available: How To Calculate
Cost-Per-Hire (CPH) (glassdoor.com)

[2] Society For Human Resource

Management, “SHRM Customize Talent
Acquisition Benchmarking Report”, 2017.
[Online]. Available: Talent Acquisition
Benchmarking Report (shrm.org)

Data Analysis Business

Human Resources Data Visualization

Problem Solving

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