Explore the push, pull and stay factors that can influence R&D employees, alongside key distinctions in employee turnover and theories that help explain leaving decisions.
Employee turnover refers to people leaving an organisation and being replaced or leaving positions vacant. Turnover is not a single type of event: it can be voluntary or involuntary, avoidable or unavoidable, and functional or dysfunctional. Understanding why employees leave or remain is therefore more useful than looking only at an overall turnover percentage.
Research and development work often depends on specialist expertise, accumulated knowledge, collaboration and the ability to sustain innovation over time. Clyssan invests heavily in R&D and faces pressure for rapid results, including work on sustainable packaging. This makes the employment experience of R&D staff important because both the nature of the work and the external opportunities available to specialists can influence decisions to stay or leave.
A useful distinction is between push and pull factors. Push factors are aspects of the current employment experience that encourage an employee to consider leaving. Pull factors are attractive alternatives outside the organisation. The two can operate together: dissatisfaction may make an employee receptive to an external opportunity, while a strong external offer may trigger departure even when the current job is broadly satisfactory.
Sustained workload pressure, unrealistic deadlines or insufficient resources can weaken the employment experience. In R&D, pressure for rapid innovation may become particularly significant when employees need time for experimentation, learning and problem solving. The impact depends on whether pressure is experienced as a manageable challenge or as persistent strain that reduces wellbeing and job quality.
Recognition can affect whether employees feel their contribution is valued. Clyssan’s case indicates that R&D achievements are credited to the department rather than individual employees. Team recognition can support collective identity, but some specialists may also value visibility for their own expertise and contribution. Where employees perceive that effort or innovation is consistently overlooked, recognition can become a push factor.
Employees may remain when they can see credible opportunities to deepen expertise, gain responsibility or progress their careers. Limited development or unclear progression can encourage departure, particularly where specialist employees believe another employer can offer stronger professional growth. Development does not necessarily mean promotion into management; technical career pathways can also be important for expert employees.
Pay and benefits can influence turnover when employees believe their reward is uncompetitive or unfair relative to contribution, market rates or comparable roles. Reward is rarely the only factor, and increasing salary may not resolve problems involving workload, leadership or career development. Nevertheless, external labour-market premiums can strengthen pull factors when competitors are actively seeking similar expertise.
Interesting and meaningful work can encourage retention, especially in knowledge-intensive roles. R&D employees may value intellectual challenge, opportunities to solve significant problems and the ability to see how their work contributes to organisational or environmental goals. Conversely, repetitive work, limited autonomy or barriers to applying expertise can reduce attachment to the role.
The relationship with managers can influence workload, recognition, development, psychological safety and access to resources. Supportive management can help employees navigate demanding work, while poor communication, inconsistent decisions or limited support can become reasons to leave. In specialist environments, managers also need to balance accountability with appropriate professional autonomy.
Employees experience an organisation through its norms, relationships and everyday practices. Collaboration, inclusion, trust and respectful treatment can strengthen reasons to remain. Conflict, exclusion or a culture that discourages challenge can have the opposite effect. For R&D teams, knowledge sharing and collaboration can be particularly important because innovation often depends on combining expertise.
Flexible working and manageable work-life boundaries can influence retention where roles allow them. Employee expectations may differ, so flexibility should not be treated as one universal arrangement. Its value depends on job requirements, individual circumstances and whether flexible practices are supported consistently rather than available only in principle.
Competitors may attract R&D employees through higher reward, more advanced facilities, greater research autonomy, stronger career prospects or the opportunity to work on high-profile projects. Labour-market demand for particular scientific or technical skills can increase employees’ alternatives and bargaining power. Retention analysis therefore needs external labour-market evidence as well as internal employee data.
Avoidable turnover arises from factors an organisation may reasonably influence, such as poor management, weak development or uncompetitive employment practices. Unavoidable turnover may result from circumstances the employer cannot realistically prevent, such as relocation for personal reasons. The distinction helps organisations focus resources on causes where intervention can make a meaningful difference.
Voluntary turnover occurs when an employee chooses to leave, while involuntary turnover results from an employer decision, such as dismissal or redundancy. The categories should not be confused with functional and dysfunctional turnover. A voluntary departure, for example, can be particularly damaging if the person is a high-performing specialist whose expertise is difficult to replace.
Retention is not simply the absence of dissatisfaction. Employees may remain because they value meaningful work, supportive relationships, fair reward, career opportunities, flexibility, organisational purpose, professional autonomy or a positive culture. Strong retention practice therefore examines what creates attachment as well as what causes dissatisfaction.
March and Simon’s organisational equilibrium perspective helps explain turnover through two broad ideas: how desirable it is to leave and how easy employees believe movement to another organisation would be. Applied conceptually, dissatisfaction can increase the desirability of leaving, while strong external demand can increase perceived ease of movement. The framework highlights why internal experience and external opportunity should be considered together.
Mobley’s turnover model presents leaving as a process rather than an instant decision. Job dissatisfaction can lead employees to think about quitting, evaluate alternatives, search for opportunities and compare those alternatives with the current role before deciding whether to leave. The model is useful because it suggests that warning signs and intervention opportunities may exist before resignation.
Turnover models help explain departure, but retention analysis should also examine positive reasons for remaining. An employee may have external opportunities yet stay because the current role provides valued relationships, development, purpose or work that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. This prevents analysis from assuming that every employee exposed to a pull factor will leave.
Clyssan’s R&D context provides several issues to investigate rather than predetermined conclusions. Learners can consider how pressure for fast results, departmental recognition practices, the significance of sustainable-packaging research, development opportunities and external demand for specialist talent could affect different employees. Evidence is needed to establish which factors are most influential rather than assuming the case facts have the same effect on everyone.
Useful internal evidence can include exit interviews, stay interviews, engagement surveys, turnover by role or manager, absence, internal mobility and reasons recorded for leaving. External evidence can include salary benchmarks and labour-market demand. No single measure gives a complete explanation, so combining data can help distinguish isolated departures from recurring patterns.
The command to discuss calls for consideration of different factors and how they interact. Rather than listing pay, workload and development, examine why each might influence an R&D employee, whether it operates as a push, pull or stay factor, and what could make its effect stronger or weaker. Relevant theory can support the discussion but should not replace application to the organisational context.
Useful research includes CIPD evidence on employee turnover and retention, academic research on job satisfaction and turnover intentions, March and Simon’s organisational equilibrium ideas, Mobley’s turnover process, and evidence relating to reward, development, recognition and job quality. Current labour-market evidence can strengthen analysis of external pull factors.
Common weaknesses include assuming all turnover is harmful, treating pay as the only reason employees leave, listing factors without discussing their interaction, confusing voluntary turnover with avoidable turnover, using theory without applying it, or assuming that every R&D employee will respond to the same employment factor in the same way.
Use this resource to understand the different forces that can influence employee decisions to leave or remain. Develop your own discussion using appropriate evidence and apply it independently to Clyssan’s R&D context. The material supports learning and research and is not intended as a submission-ready assessment response.
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Next, compare two approaches Clyssan could use to retain R&D talent.
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