Information Technology Employees Intention to Leave in Small and Medium Enterprises in Kunming City, People’s Republic of China

Abstract

Employees’ intention to leave is a very common phenomenon of the high wastage of employees in enterprises, especially in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the IT industry, which has seriously endangered the survival and development of these enterprises. In this study, a quantitative research approach was employed. The researcher used questionnaires to obtain data on the current employees’ intention to leave; descriptive statistics, such as means and standard deviations were used for the data analysis. The participants of this study were current IT industry employees in Kunming City, China. The total population was about 270 people, including the employees and HR managers. Random sampling was used to identify the sample of the study. The total number of the sample was at least 159 people, according Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) criteria. Questionnaires were used to collect the data of intention to leave in SMEs. The results revealed that employees less than 20 years old, with an education lower than a bachelor’s degree and who had worked for 6 months to 3 years had a higher intention to leave. Among environmental factors, enterprise factors and individual factors, the individual factors showed the highest mean of intention to leave. The individual factors included the salary factor, benefits factor and career growth, with these three factors playing an important role in employees’ intention to leave.