Volume 15, Number 2

Employee Attrition Prediction using Machine Learning Models: A Review Paper

  Authors

Haya Alqahtani, Hana Almagrabi and Amal Alharbi, King Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

  Abstract

Employee attrition refers to the decrease in staff numbers within an organization due to various reasons. As it has a negative impact on long-term growth objectives and workplace productivity, firms have recognized it as a significant concern. To address this issue, organizations are increasingly turning to machine-learning approaches to forecast employee attrition rates. This topic has gained significant attention from researchers, especially in recent times. Several studies have applied various machine-learning methods to predict employee attrition, producing different resultsdepending on the employed methods, factors, and datasets. However, there has been no comprehensive comparative review of multiple studies applying machine-learning models to predict employee attrition to date. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by providing an overview of research conducted on applying machine learning to predict employee attrition from 2019 to February 2024. A literature review of relevant studies was conducted, summarized, and classified. Most studies agree on conducting comparative experiments with multiple predictive models to determine the most effective one.From this literature survey, the RF algorithm and XGB ensemble method are repeatedly the best-performing, outperforming many other algorithms. Additionally, the application of deep learning to employee attrition prediction issues also shows promise. While there are discrepancies in the datasets used in previous studies, it is notable that the dataset provided by IBM is the most widely utilized. This study serves as a concise review for new researchers, facilitating their understanding of the primary techniques employed in predicting employee attrition and highlighting recent research trends in this field. Furthermore, it provides organizations with insight into the prominent factors affecting employee attrition, as identified by studies, enabling them to implement solutions aimed at reducing attrition rates.

  Keywords

Employee Attrition, Prediction, Machine Learning, Ensemble Methods, Feature Selection