Analyzing employee attrition of research and development firms using mixed methods

Employees are the assets of an organization as they are the source of an indispensable and sustainable competitive advantage. Employee attrition is critical to the knowledge-intensive Research and Development (R&D) industry due to information loss. When employee joins the competing organization, and he transfer his key expertise/ competencies to competing organization. The present study collected empirical data from 457 samples through a survey. Grounded in Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, this study employs a mixed-method approach, integrating logistic regression with semi-structured interviews, to examine attrition drivers in Indian R&D firms. By synthesizing fairness, tangible benefits, workplace relationships, and workplace stress, the study offers novel insights into retention challenges specific to knowledge-intensive environments. The study is distinct as we did not find significant studies that discuss the concerns and expectations of highly skilled employees to improve retention rates. The present study also addresses methodological gaps, as we did not find significant studies that used both logistic regression using machine learning and semi-structured interviews to analyze employee attrition of R&D firms. The findings of the study reveal that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors are accountable for employee attrition in R&D firms.