(Credit: fizkes – stock.adobe.com)

Congratulations! You've been promoted! One would think hearing those words would make an employee feel proud and excited for the new role. Yet according to the ADP Research Institute's (ADPRI) Today at Work (September 2023) report, 29% of employees had left their organization within a month of being promoted. Promotions are quite rare, just 4.5% of employees get promoted within two years of being hired according to a previous Today at Work (May 2023) that analyzed the job histories of more than 51 million U.S. workers between 2019 and 2023. So, the overall impact on an organization's headcount is small. However, it's difficult to measure the emotional impact that a quick-turnover promotion might have on the organization and the team itself.

At first glance this finding seems counter-intuitive. Why would an employee leave so quickly after becoming promoted? There is no one root cause that explains these sudden departures, but the ADPRI report does give some clues. For example, the report finds one of the greatest risks of a newly promoted employee leaving is when the promotion occurs at a job that requires little to no preparation. The data also shows that when looking at job level, individual contributors pose the smallest risk of leaving their employer after getting promoted, while first-level managers represent the biggest risk.