21.06.2022

The Great Resignation: The reasons employees are quitting

A new study, by StandOut CV, has analysed almost 2,700 social media posts to reveal the most common reasons employees are quitting their jobs during The Great Resignation.

The analysis reviewed thousands of tweets and Reddit posts and comments where users had stated they had quit their jobs. This dataset was filtered down to 2,698 posts where someone revealed the exact reasons that caused them to hand in their resignation.

The full results and findings of the study can be found here: https://standout-cv.com/why-employees-are-quitting-the-great-resignation

The top reasons employees are quitting

The most frequently mentioned reason employees stated they quit on social media was due to mental health problems and burnout, accounting for 15.75% of all posts about quitting. After that, the second reason was management (13.86%) followed by COVID mandates (10.57%), which included issues with both vaccines and masks.

The top 30 reasons and their percentage share of social media posts can be found in the table below:

Rank	Reason for Quitting	Share of Social Media Posts (%)
1	Burnout or mental health issues	15.75%
2	Management	13.86%
3	COVID mandates	10.57%
4	No work-life balance	9.10%
5	Low pay/salary	8.80%
6	Feeling unfulfilled	5.90%
7	Got a new job	5.35%
8	Discrimination	4.04%
9	Side hustle	3.75%
10	Working conditions	2.99%
11	Harassment/Bullying	2.02%
12	Physical health issues	2.02%
13	Family commitments	1.98%
14	Coworkers	1.90%
15	Crypto/NFTs	1.60%
16	COVID worry	1.43%
17	Working while sick	1.18%
18	Restricted vacation	1.10%
19	No remote working options	0.97%
20	Shift scheduling	0.80%
21	Poor benefits	0.76%
22	Love/relationships	0.51%
23	To seek education	0.42%
24	Travelling	0.29%
25	Clothing/uniform issues	0.25%
26	Drugs/alcohol	0.21%
27	Moving area	0.21%
28	Company values	0.13%
29	Lack of promotion	0.13%
30	Menopause concerns	0.13%

Exact issues with management

While management was found to be the second-most common reason for someone to quit their job, some posts also discussed the issues they had with their managers.

Of this dataset, 25.29% of posts related to bad behavior from the manager toward the employee, and 10.92% mentioned how management did not respect a work-life balance.

The top ten reasons someone disliked, and quit because of their manager were:

Bad behavior toward employees (25.29%)
Work-life balance disrupted (10.92%)
Bullying/abuse (8.62%)
Micromanagement (8.05%)
Low pay/not increasing pay (7.47%)
Discrimination (6.9%)
Medical issues not respected (6.32%)
Denied a promotion (4.02%)
Divisive political opinions (4.02%)
Lack of employee appreciation (4.45%)

Discrimination issues mentioned in social media posts

With discrimination being the 8th most common reason someone quit their job during The Great Resignation, StandOut CV dug further into the data to review exactly what kinds of discrimination were most frequent.

Racism was mentioned in 31.25% of discrimination-related social media posts, followed by sexism (19.8%), ableism (8.38%), and LGBTQIA+-related discrimination in 3.13%.

In response to the findings, Andrew Fennell, former recruiter and director at StandOut CV, commented: “Mental health problems and poor management have sadly become reflective of the pandemic working era and exactly what we would expect to see in this study about The Great Resignation. Employees have realised their worth now more than ever and are happy to vote with their feet, moving onto the next employer that hopefully has a better working environment and management.

“It’s shocking to see the third most frequent reason employees quit being disagreements with their workplaces COVID mandates. This contrasts starkly with the 16th reason being people worrying about the virus in the workplace, evidently, far less of a reason for someone to quit. These tweets and Reddit posts were still being posted online in May 2022, so there’s no sign of this divide going away anytime soon.”

The study reviewed content posted between 1 March 2021 – 1 May 2022.

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