Promotion and resignation in employee networks

TL;DR

This study analyzes employee interaction and social networks within a company to identify structural features that predict promotion and resignation, offering insights for better enterprise management.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive dataset of work-related and social interactions and demonstrates their predictive power for employee career changes, surpassing previous survey-based studies.

Findings

In-degree in work network predicts promotion.

K-shell index and in-degree in social network predict resignation.

Work-related interactions have higher correlation with career outcomes.

Abstract

Enterprises have put more and more emphasis on data analysis so as to obtain effective management advices. Managers and researchers are trying to dig out the major factors that lead to employees' promotion and resignation. Most previous analyses were based on questionnaire survey, which usually consists of a small fraction of samples and contains biases caused by psychological defense. In this paper, we successfully collect a data set consisting of all the employees' work-related interactions (action network, AN for short) and online social connections (social network, SN for short) of a company, which inspires us to reveal the correlations between structural features and employees' career development, namely promotion and resignation. Through statistical analysis and prediction, we show that the structural features of both AN and SN are correlated and predictive to employees' promotion and resignation, and the AN has higher correlation and predictability. More specifically, the in-degree in AN is the most relevant indicator for promotion; while the k-shell index in AN and in-degree in SN are both very predictive to resignation. Our results provide a novel and actionable understanding of enterprise management and suggest that to enhance the interplays among employees, no matter work-related or social interplays, can largely improve the loyalty of employees.