The More Diverse Your Staff in Terms of Age, the More Diverse the Reasons that Keep Them from Leaving Their Current Position

A McKinsey study involving 15,975 traditional employees investigated the reasons different age groups choose when deciding to stay in or leave their current job. While workers across the age spectrum cited similar reasons for leaving or starting new jobs, those that chose to remain offered diverging reasons. Younger workers favored flexibility compared to older workers, who were likelier to stay for the money.

Top Six Reasons Why Respondents Chose to Stay in Their Current Job

Source: McKinsey & Company

The implication for credit managers is that the greater the range of your staff’s ages, the more job satisfaction issues you will need to address to keep everybody happy. Besides the flexibility versus compensation divide, career development and advancement opportunities are more important to younger workers, while older workers favor meaningful work. Likewise, a safe workplace is more important to older workers, while reliable and supportive co-workers and supervisors were selected by two of the three younger cohorts.

For more complete details from the McKinsey study, go to “Gen what? Debunking age-based myths about worker preferences,”