Analyzing Employee Exit Surveys
By: Kamil Mysiak
Tags: Sentiment Analysis, Python Pandas, Employee Engagement, Employee Surveys, Python

Latent Construct Sentiment by Respondent Characteristics

When analyzing survey data it is quite easy to end-up down a proverbial rabbit-hole of charts and plots only to lose sight of your goal. In other words, we need to narrow our focus. The ultimate goal of analyzing sentiment surveys is to identify areas of weakness where organizational initiatives can be implemented to improve those identified areas. The area we will mainly focus our efforts on are voluntary terminations. First, they make up almost 50% of the respondents. Secondly, this is the employee population where we can make the most significant impact on using organizational initiatives. Finally, we want to limit the amount of voluntary turnover in order to limit the knowledge drain from the organization and minimize the recruiting and training cost associated with hiring replacement employees.

# plotting average likert sentiment by respondent characteristics for voluntary terminations

def bi_volterm_plot(feature1, feature2):

tmp_df = df.loc[(df['reason_of_term']=='vol_term')]

ax = round(tmp_df.groupby(feature1)[feature2].mean(),2).sort_values().plot(kind='barh', stacked=True,

figsize=(25,15), fontsize=25)

for i in ax.patches:

width, height = i.get_width(), i.get_height()

x, y = i.get_xy()

ax.text(x+width/2,

y+height/2,

'{:.2f}'.format(width),

horizontalalignment='center',

verticalalignment='center',

size=25)

plt.title('Average {} Sentiment of Voluntary Terminations by {}'.format(feature2, feature1),fontsize=30, pad=25)

plt.ylabel(' ')

plt.legend(prop={'size':20})

Employee Valued Factor

Not surprisingly voluntary termination from the HR department had the lowest score on emp_value as HR has the lowest overall sentiment. Additionally, purchasing, customer service, and production also scored relatively low. This is important as production and customer service have the largest number of survey respondents.

Since we know promotional opportunities and performance recognized are the main drivers behind low emp_value sentiment we are plotting these Likert items against department, age, and job type.

Filtering the data for only voluntary terminations, we can see that most departments score low on promotional opportunities but customer_service, HR, and purchasing score particularly low. Age scores especially low as voluntarily terminated employees between the ages of 21–50 score very low on promotional opportunities sentiment. Age group 46–50 yrs old scores very low (2.62) on this Likert item. Voluntarily terminated executives, managerial, machine ops, and service workers job types scored low on promotional opportunities sentiment with executives scoring very low (2.17). Finally, all tenure groups besides 1–14 yrs score low on promotional opportunities but 5–9 yrs scored especially low (2.80).

Once again we see purchasing and HR score the lowest on performance recognized but IT and production have fairly low sentiment as well. From an employee age perspective, 26–50 have scored the lowest, plus these age groups also scored very low on promotional opportunities. Again we see executive, managerial, and machine ops job types score the lowest. Finally, much like we saw with promotional opportunities, tenure group 5–9 yrs has scored the lowest on performance recognized.

Fair Salary Factor

Fair_salary scored second-lowest on overall respondent sentiment. Now that we have filtered our data for voluntary terminations let’s take a look where salary sentiment is the lowest. Not surprisingly, HR and purchasing departments scored the lowest. However, production which has a tendency to score low as well on many Likert items actually scored relatively well. That said, we do see R&D and IT scoring low on this Likert item. 46–50 yr olds again score low as they record an average sentiment of (2.76). Executives, managerial, and administrative job types score the lowest on fair_salary. Finally, tenure group 5–9 yrs scored the lowest.

Organizational Environment Factor

We know that the organizational environment factor scored third lowest in terms of overall sentiment. As we filter for voluntary terminations we see that HR and purchasing scored the lowest on this factor. Let’s break this factor into its individual Likert items.

We saw from our analysis above that org_culture and grievances_resolution were the two Likert items that seemed to contribute most to organizational environment’s low overall sentiment.

It would seem org-culture has scored low and at times very low across all departments. From an age perspective, org_culture is the lowest for 46–50 yr olds but it’s generally low for individuals between 26–50 yrs old. Executives have scored extremely low on this Likert item (1.80) followed by machine ops and managerial. That said, all job types besides sales have scored below an average score of 3.00. Finally from a tenure perspective, all tenure groups scored below 3.00 with 5–9yrs group scoring particularly low.

Once again purchasing, HR, customer service and production scored the lowest on grievances_resolution. Age groups, once more we see 46–50-year-old respondents make up the lowest sentiment. Executives and machine ops had the lowest sentiment for grievances resolution. Finally, again 5–9yrs tenure group scored the lowest on this Likert item much like org_culture.

In Summary

Respondents’ Characteristics

Voluntary terminations made up the largest group of survey respondents at almost 50%. This is wonderful news as it allows us enough data to make insights into the organizational sentiment of a, particularly important population. Understanding the potential reason why voluntary terminations are occurring can help the company reduce this turnover thereby minimizing knowledge drain and hiring cost.

Production (32%), customer service (19%), and sales (16%) made up the majority of survey responses from a departmental perspective. Despite the remaining departments having a significantly lower response rate their number of responses is not low enough which would warrant their insights meaningless.

Respondents 56 yrs of age and older made up the largest group at (23%) and the remaining groups were relatively even besides 20 yrs and younger which only made up (2.3%). By slicing this data by reason of termination we can see that 54% of 56 yrs and older responders were retiring.

Females answered the survey at almost 2:1 rate compared to males.

Job types were fairly evenly represented in the survey with Service workers (19%), professional (17%), and sales (14%) taking the top three. Executives answered the survey at the lowest rates (3%) or 24 responses. 24 is a relatively low number of responses which can produce skewed results. Furthermore, the executive job type had the largest percentage (38%) of involuntary terminations and we know that involuntary terminations have a tendency to produce more negative overall sentiment. Any insights regarding the executive population will have to be scrutinized and validated with much larger sample size.

Finally, organization tenure yield an even representation of responses at average 20% per tenure group.

Overall Employee Sentiment

As expected involuntary terminations had the lowest average sentiment but closely followed by voluntary terminations. It would seem HR, production, and sales departments had the overall lowest sentiment. Furthermore, responders between the ages of 46–50 along with executive, machine ops, and managerial job types had the lowest overall sentiment.

The three latent factors with the lowest overall sentiment were salary satisfaction (3.14), employee valued (3.31), and organizational environment (3.46). If we examine the individual Likert items/questions for these three latent factors we can see that promotional opportunities and performance recognition were had the lowest sentiment for employee valued. Fair salary had the lowest sentiment for salary satisfaction. Finally, organizational culture and grievances resolution had the lowest overall sentiment for organizational environment.

Voluntary Terminations Sentiment

When specifically looking at the voluntarily terminated population we see similar results as above. Salary satisfaction, employee value, and organizational environment had the lowest overall sentiment. Again promotional opportunities and performance recognition were the driving factors for low employee value sentiment. Fair salary was the main driver of low salary satisfaction. Finally, organizational culture and grievances resolution had the lowest scores on the organizational environment latent factor.

Promotional Opportunities (employee value)

Most departments need to improve their access to promotional opportunities but purchasing, HR, customer service, and production departments are in greatest need to stem voluntary turnover. Furthermore, it seems promotional opportunities sentiment is low across most age groups especially 46–50 years olds. Executives, managerial, machine ops and service worker job types suffered most from lack of promotional opportunities. Finally, tenured employees between 5–9 yrs had the lowest sentiment towards promotional opportunities.

Performance Recognition (employee value)

Purchasing and HR had suffered from low-performance recognition. Low sentiment for performance recognition was also shared by 46–50 yrs olds, executives, managerial, and machine ops job types. Finally, we again see 5–9 yrs of tenure seems to have low sentiment on this item.

Fair Salary (salary satisfaction)

HR, purchasing, R&D and IT had the lowest sentiment towards their salary. Older age groups, particularly 46–50 yrs old, had low sentiment. Executives, managerial and administrative respondents scored the lowest on salary satisfaction.

Organizational Culture (org environment)

It seems organizational culture has the lowest overall sentiment across the entire survey. All departments, especially purchasing, customer service, and production seem to suffer from low sentiment. The same is true for age and job type where 46–50 yr olds and executives, machine ops, and managerial seem to score the lowest.

Grievance Resolution (org environment)

The sentiment for this topic is generally higher than organization culture but it is still a major contributing factor to low organizational environment sentiment. Again the same departments, purchasing, HR, customer service, and production score the lowest. The trend continues as 46–50-year-olds score the lowest again. Executives, machine ops, and service workers score the lowest as well.

Executive Summary

We focused our attention on analyzing an employee exit survey from roughly 600 employees which was collected over a 4 year prior. The vast majority of survey responders (50%) were voluntary terminations. Departments of production, customer service, and sales made up the majority of respondents. The overall respondents’ age was slightly skewed as the largest group was 56 yrs of age and older. Finally, job types were proportionally represented.

Involuntary terminations had the lowest overall sentiment closely followed by voluntary terminations. Overall, salary satisfaction, employee value and organizational environment had the lowest sentiment. These results were confirmed for the voluntary terminated sample as well.

The analysis was then specifically focused on the voluntarily terminated sample. It seems in order to increase overall employee sentiment and potentially reduce voluntary turnover the organization needs to focus its initiatives on improving promotional opportunities, performance recognition, salary, organizational culture, and grievances resolution.

Any initiatives developed towards improving the aforementioned areas in order to potentially stem voluntary turnover would be best targeted towards the purchasing, HR, customer service, and production departments (in order to need). Furthermore, employees between the ages of 46–50, 26–30, and 36–40 would also benefit from any and all initiatives. From a job type perspective, executives, machine ops, managerial, and service workers would also benefit from these initiatives (in order of need). It is important to note the executive job type had a small sample size (24) and only a third of that were voluntary terminations. The survey, in general, had a relatively small sample size (600), therefore, it is recommended these results be validated by a larger survey sample. That said, these results do provide a small glimpse into the organizational issues which might reside inside.