If employees feel stifled and unable to progress at a job for long, they'll jump ship and go elsewhere rather than move within the company to another position.

That's according to a study, "Why Do Workers Quit?" from Glassdoor Economic Research, which also finds other factors that improve employee retention include high employee satisfaction, better opportunities for career advancement, the quality of the employer's culture and values and higher pay.

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Employers should be warned, Glassdoor says, since the average cost of employee turnover amounts to 21 percent of that employee's annual salary. Perhaps surprisingly, other workplace factors such as work-life balance, senior leadership and the quality of compensation and benefits packages have no statistical impact on employee turnover.

Knowing how expensive turnover is could help employers take steps that will induce employees to stay, such as to improvements to company culture, competitive base pay and regular promotion and advancement of employees into new roles. Also, according to Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor, knowing what keeps employees can help employers recruit, too.

In a statement, Chamberlain says, "[T]hese findings tell recruiters and employers looking to hire what to focus on to bring candidates in the door. For example, focusing on passive or active candidates that have been in their roles for quite a while or are at companies without a strong company culture could help bolster recruiting efforts."

Not only satisfaction with company culture can help recruit new employees; Glassdoor cites an academic study that indicates it can also help retain existing employees. But pay matters, too; just conferring a new title upon promotion won't cut it.

The study finds that when changing jobs, employees earn a 5.2 percent pay increase on average. The study's statistical analysis finds that a 10 percent increase in base pay increases the odds an employee will stay at the company by 1.5 percent.

So what constitutes stagnation, and when will employees get itchy feet? The average worker spends 15 months in one role, the study found, but employees differ when it comes to the industries in which they work.

Workers in government (18.6 months), aerospace and defense (17.3 months) and media (16.9 months) spend the longest time in their roles, but other fields turn over more quickly, such as in the fields of real estate (13.3 months), biotech and pharmaceuticals (12.7 months) and construction, repair and maintenance (10.6 months). Adding an additional 10 months in a role, the study finds, boosts the chance of an employee going elsewhere by 1 percent — a statistically significant finding.

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