Resource Center

If you know what’s best for you, you don’t bring up the ‘D’ word in a marriage unless you really mean it. Getting a divorce is a serious matter, although it happens quite often, with about 40 to 50 percent of the couples in the U.S. and UK calling it quits (Dew, 2002; Dobson & Habershon, 2006).

While 60 percent of marriages last, the commitment is quite a bit shorter for employees and employers. People are now staying in their job for an average of only 4.1 years (BLS, 2006), and in a healthy economy, movement is quickly becoming the norm. Similar to a marital divorce, professional divorce is expensive for both the employee and the employer. For the employee, a divorce means change—something that no one likes. Commonly, people don’t change unless they feel sufficient pain to motivate a change, and hence, the pain of changing jobs is perceived as less stressful than the pain of staying. Employees experience the ‘push’ to get out of the job, the ‘friction’ of moving and changing and the ‘pull’ of a new opportunity. If the value of leaving is higher than that of staying, the employee is gone.