Predicting Employee Attrition Using Machine Learning Approaches

Abstract

Employee attrition refers to the natural reduction in the employees in an organization due to many unavoidable factors. Employee attrition results in a massive loss for an organization. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) determines that USD 4129 is the average cost-per-hire for a new employee. According to recent stats, 57.3% is the attrition rate in the year 2021. A research study needs to be implemented to find the causes of employee attrition and a learning framework to predict employee attrition. This research study aimed to analyze the organizational factors that caused employee attrition and the prediction of employee attrition using machine learning techniques. The four machine learning techniques were applied in comparison. The proposed optimized Extra Trees Classifier (ETC) approach achieved an accuracy score of 93% for employee attrition prediction. The proposed approach outperformed recent state-of-the-art studies. The Employee Exploratory Data Analysis (EEDA) was applied to determine the factors that caused employee attrition. Our study revealed that the monthly income, hourly rate, job level, and age are the key factors that cause employee attrition. Our proposed approach and research findings help organizations overcome employee attrition by improving the factors that cause attrition.