Don't leave me this way! A qualitative study of influences on the organisational commitment and turnover intentions of graduates early in their career

While the demand for graduate recruits is growing, organisations still have little insight into how best to retain those graduates who join them. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study which explored what factors were most likely to influence graduates' decisions to stay with or leave their first employer in the early years of their career. It does so within a conceptual framework built around organisational commitment and its antecedents and consequences. The results are used to propose how employers might take action to maximise retention, and to discuss the importance of career guidance in helping graduates to develop realistic and practical notions of what they can expect from work and what will be expected of them.