# Employee Attrition

## Background

Attrition in very basic concept is type of employee churn. Some probably wonders what the diffrent with another type of churn ‘the turnover’, both are a decrease number of employees on staff, but attrition is typically voluntary or natural - like retirement or resignation. Acording to FRED - Economic Research, quits rate in private sector have been increasing. This higher rate often means that employees are dissatisfied with their jobs.

The problem is, this could lead to relatively high cost to the company, the time or the cost of money from acquiring a new talent. In fact, the average cost-per-hire to fill a vacant position due to turnover or preventable attrition is $4,129. In this project I try to predict employee attrition with machine learning. I will use a data set provide by IBM - Watson Analytics Community Sample Data. In his data, each variable (row) describes the employee with parameters like: age, department, Job Role, income, years at company, etc. The target variable ‘Attrition’ is known (it is historical value) and our main objective is to do machine learning classification (we predict yes/no for attrition). The HR_employee_attrition.csv data is containing Employee Attrition and Performance from IBM, take a peek to the data: Age Attrition BusinessTravel DailyRate Department DistanceFromHome Education EducationField EmployeeCount EmployeeNumber EnvironmentSatisfaction Gender HourlyRate JobInvolvement JobLevel JobRole JobSatisfaction MaritalStatus MonthlyIncome MonthlyRate NumCompaniesWorked Over18 OverTime PercentSalaryHike PerformanceRating RelationshipSatisfaction StandardHours StockOptionLevel TotalWorkingYears TrainingTimesLastYear WorkLifeBalance YearsAtCompany YearsInCurrentRole YearsSinceLastPromotion YearsWithCurrManager 41 Yes Travel_Rarely 1102 Sales 1 2 Life Sciences 1 1 2 Female 94 3 2 Sales Executive 4 Single 5993 19479 8 Y Yes 11 3 1 80 0 8 0 1 6 4 0 5 49 No Travel_Frequently 279 Research & Development 8 1 Life Sciences 1 2 3 Male 61 2 2 Research Scientist 2 Married 5130 24907 1 Y No 23 4 4 80 1 10 3 3 10 7 1 7 37 Yes Travel_Rarely 1373 Research & Development 2 2 Other 1 4 4 Male 92 2 1 Laboratory Technician 3 Single 2090 2396 6 Y Yes 15 3 2 80 0 7 3 3 0 0 0 0 33 No Travel_Frequently 1392 Research & Development 3 4 Life Sciences 1 5 4 Female 56 3 1 Research Scientist 3 Married 2909 23159 1 Y Yes 11 3 3 80 0 8 3 3 8 7 3 0 27 No Travel_Rarely 591 Research & Development 2 1 Medical 1 7 1 Male 40 3 1 Laboratory Technician 2 Married 3468 16632 9 Y No 12 3 4 80 1 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 In here I will delve into the specific details with far greater depth few of parameters in the dataset we’ve just read into our environment: • EmployeeID: The ID of each individual employee. • Attrition: Yes or No Parameter wether the employee commit attrition. • BusinessTravel: One of factor of Non-Travel, Travel_Frequently and Travel_Rarely • Education: Ranged from 1 Below College, 2 College, 3 Bachelor, 4 Master and 5 Doctor • EnvironmentSatisfaction:Rating from employee range from; 1 Low, 2 Medium, 3 High and 4 Very High. This appraisal were included in few parameters such as;JobInvolvement,RelationshipSatisfaction, PerformanceRating, JobSatisfaction and WorkLifeBalance. ## Preprocessing data Before we start anylizing the data we should check if theres mising value that would hinder our process. # detecting missing value attdat %>% aggr() There’s no missing value and after we check, there’s a few parameters in the data who don’t have variance that we could remove it in order to decrease dimension. # Quick check glimpse(attdat) # Drop no-Variance Variables attdat %<>% select(-EmployeeCount, -EmployeeNumber, -Over18, -StandardHours) %>% mutate( Attrition = factor(Attrition, levels = c("Yes", "No")), Age = Age %>% as.numeric(), DailyRate = DailyRate %>% as.numeric(), DistanceFromHome = DistanceFromHome %>% as.numeric(), HourlyRate = HourlyRate %>% as.numeric(), MonthlyIncome = MonthlyIncome %>% as.numeric(), MonthlyRate = MonthlyRate %>% as.numeric(), NumCompaniesWorked = NumCompaniesWorked %>% as.numeric(), PercentSalaryHike = PercentSalaryHike %>% as.numeric(), TotalWorkingYears = TotalWorkingYears %>% as.numeric(), TrainingTimesLastYear = TrainingTimesLastYear %>% as.numeric(), YearsAtCompany = YearsAtCompany %>% as.numeric(), YearsInCurrentRole = YearsInCurrentRole %>% as.numeric(), YearsSinceLastPromotion = YearsSinceLastPromotion %>% as.numeric(), YearsWithCurrManager = YearsWithCurrManager %>% as.numeric(), EmployeeID = row_number() ) %>% mutate_if(is.character, as.factor) %>% mutate_if(is.integer, as.factor) %>% select(EmployeeID, everything()) # save final dataset for Shiny saveRDS(attdat, "data_input/attrition.RDS") write_csv(attdat, "data_input/predDataTemplate.csv") We split the data to training set that contains a known output and the model learns on this data in order to be generalized to other data later on and the test dataset (or subset) in order to test our model’s prediction on this subset. # Spliting the data set.seed(100) inTrain <- createDataPartition(attdat$Attrition, p = 0.9, list = FALSE)
trainatt <- attdat %>% slice(inTrain)
testatt <- attdat %>% slice(-inTrain)

# Check the portion of Attrition in train data
table(trainatt$Attrition) ## ## Yes No ## 214 1110 As we could see there’s imbalance data. I do subsampling, with downsampling thechnique which randomly subset all the classes in the training set so that their class frequencies match the least prevalent class. # down sampling the train data set.seed(100) down_train <- downSample(x = trainatt[, -1], y = trainatt$Attrition) %>%
select(-Class)

# down sampling the test data
set.seed(100)
down_test <- downSample(x = testatt[, -1],
y = testatt$Attrition) %>% select(-Class) # Check the portion of Attrition in subsampling train data table(down_train$Attrition)
##
## Yes  No
## 214 214

Because later on i would do standard classifier algorithms like Logistic Regression and Random Forest that have a bias towards classes which have number of instances. They tend to only predict the majority class data. The features of the minority class are treated as noise and are often ignored. Thus, there is a high probability of misclassification of the minority class as compared to the majority class.

So we do undersampling aims to balance class distribution by randomly eliminating majority class examples. This is done until the majority and minority class instances are balanced out.

## Machine Learning Model

### Logistic Regression

We using stepwise regression, it is a method of fitting regression models in which the choice of predictive variables is carried out by an automatic procedure. In each step, a variable is considered for addition to or subtraction from the set of explanatory variables based on some prespecified criterion. Then we choose smallest (AIC) Akaike’s ‘An Information Criterion’ that according to the formula represents the number of parameters in the fitted model.

# glm model
glmatt <- glm(formula = Attrition~., data = down_train,
family = binomial(logit))
# Choose a model by AIC in a Stepwise Algorithm
step(glmatt, direction = "both")

Modeling Logit :

glmmod1 <- glm(formula = Attrition ~ Age + BusinessTravel + DailyRate +
Department + DistanceFromHome + EducationField + EnvironmentSatisfaction
+ Gender + HourlyRate + JobInvolvement + JobLevel + JobRole +
JobSatisfaction + MaritalStatus + MonthlyIncome + NumCompaniesWorked +
OverTime + RelationshipSatisfaction + StockOptionLevel +
TotalWorkingYears + TrainingTimesLastYear + WorkLifeBalance +
YearsAtCompany + YearsInCurrentRole + YearsSinceLastPromotion +
YearsWithCurrManager, family = binomial(logit), data = down_train)

summary(glmmod1)

### Random Forest

Random forest (RF) is a machine-learning method that generally works well with high-dimensional problems and allows for nonlinear relationships between predictors; however, the presence of correlated predictors has been shown to impact its ability to identify strong predictors. The Random Forest-Recursive Feature Elimination algorithm (RF-RFE) mitigates this problem in smaller data sets. First off we have to prepare RFE environment:

# cross validation setting
number <- 5
repeats <- 3
totalFold <- number * repeats

# set length to windowNumber + 1
seeds <- vector(mode = "list", length = totalFold + 1)

# set metric to optimize
metric <- "Kappa"

# set up training control
rfeCtrl <- rfeControl(
functions = rfFuncs,
method = "repeatedcv",
number = number,
repeats = repeats,
seeds = seeds,
allowParallel = TRUE
)

Modeling the RFE :

# rfe grid
rfeGrid <- seq(from = 2, to = ncol(attdat) - 1, by = 1)

# set seeds for rfe grid
for(i in 1:totalFold) seeds[[i]] <- 1:length(rfeGrid)
seeds[[(totalFold + 1)]] <- 1

# register parallel processing
cl <- makeCluster(3)
registerDoParallel(cl)

# rfe
rfeMod <- rfe(
y = attdat$Attrition, x = attdat %>% select(-Attrition, -EmployeeID) %>% as.data.frame(), metric = metric, sizes = rfeGrid, rfeControl = rfeCtrl %>% list_modify(seeds = seeds) ) # stop parallel processing stopCluster(cl) registerDoSEQ() # selected predictors(rfeMod) ## [1] "OverTime" "MonthlyIncome" "Age" ## [4] "JobRole" "StockOptionLevel" "TotalWorkingYears" ## [7] "JobLevel" "YearsAtCompany" "MaritalStatus" ## [10] "YearsWithCurrManager" "YearsInCurrentRole" "BusinessTravel" Then we can prepare train environment to our actual data: # cross validation setting number <- 5 repeats <- 3 totalFold <- number * repeats # set length to windowNumber + 1 seeds <- vector(mode = "list", length = totalFold + 1) # set metric to optimize metric <- "Accuracy" # set up training control trControl <- trainControl( method = "repeatedcv", number = number, repeats = repeats, sampling = "down", savePredictions = "final", # summaryFunction = twoClassSummary, # classProbs = TRUE, seeds = seeds, allowParallel = TRUE ) Then we can start the training process: # random forest grid rfGrid <- expand.grid( mtry = seq(from = 2, to = length(predictors(rfeMod)) - 1, by = 1) ) # set seeds for random forest grid for(i in 1:totalFold) seeds[[i]] <- 1:nrow(rfGrid) seeds[[(totalFold + 1)]] <- 1 # register parallel processing cl <- makeCluster(3) registerDoParallel(cl) # train random forest rfMod <- train( y = trainatt$Attrition,
x = trainatt %>%
select(predictors(rfeMod)) %>%
as.data.frame(),
method = "rf",
ntree = 500,
tuneGrid = rfGrid,
trControl = trControl %>% list_modify(seeds = seeds)
)

# stop parallel processing
stopCluster(cl)
registerDoSEQ()

# plot cv results
plot(rfMod)

# plot variable importance
varImp(rfMod) %>% plot()

### Models Performance

####Confusion Matrix of Logistic Regression model

down_test$predglm1 <- predict(glmmod1, down_test, type = "response") ## Warning in predict.lm(object, newdata, se.fit, scale = 1, type = ## ifelse(type == : prediction from a rank-deficient fit may be misleading down_test$predglm1 <- ifelse(down_test$predglm1 >= 0.5, "Yes","No") down_test$predglm1 <- factor(down_test$predglm1, levels = c("Yes","No")) confusionMatrix( data = down_test$predglm1, reference = down_test$Attrition)  ## Confusion Matrix and Statistics ## ## Reference ## Prediction Yes No ## Yes 8 13 ## No 15 10 ## ## Accuracy : 0.3913 ## 95% CI : (0.2509, 0.5463) ## No Information Rate : 0.5 ## P-Value [Acc > NIR] : 0.9481 ## ## Kappa : -0.2174 ## Mcnemar's Test P-Value : 0.8501 ## ## Sensitivity : 0.3478 ## Specificity : 0.4348 ## Pos Pred Value : 0.3810 ## Neg Pred Value : 0.4000 ## Prevalence : 0.5000 ## Detection Rate : 0.1739 ## Detection Prevalence : 0.4565 ## Balanced Accuracy : 0.3913 ## ## 'Positive' Class : Yes ##  #### Confusion Matrix of Random Forest model rfMod %>% predict(down_test) %>% confusionMatrix(down_test$Attrition, positive = "Yes") 
## Confusion Matrix and Statistics
##
##           Reference
## Prediction Yes No
##        Yes  20  7
##        No    3 16
##
##                Accuracy : 0.7826
##                  95% CI : (0.6364, 0.8905)
##     No Information Rate : 0.5
##     P-Value [Acc > NIR] : 7.821e-05
##
##                   Kappa : 0.5652
##  Mcnemar's Test P-Value : 0.3428
##
##             Sensitivity : 0.8696
##             Specificity : 0.6957
##          Pos Pred Value : 0.7407
##          Neg Pred Value : 0.8421
##              Prevalence : 0.5000
##          Detection Rate : 0.4348
##    Detection Prevalence : 0.5870
##       Balanced Accuracy : 0.7826
##
##        'Positive' Class : Yes
## 

We gonna focus on metric sensitivity/recall, this measurement purposed to see when an employee leaving (do attrition), how often does my classifier predict that correctly?. A quick look at these prediction can demonstrate that Random Forest is clearly best for this criteria. Out of all the attrition cases. This translates to a attrition metric sensitivity/recall about 86% and accuracy is about 78%, far better than Logistic Regression with metric sensitivity/recall about 34% and accuracy of about 39%.

## Data Exploration

### Chart effect of few variable frequency to attrition

The following label A plot giving results density of Age parameters. The plot show that attrition rate higher in the age of 30 to 40. We can see the following B plot that giving results density of Age and Business Travel parameter to Attrition. We can see something interesting, Travel_Frequently and Travel_rarely both don’t have normal distiribution. From the age 40 to 50 attrition of frequently travel employee have fluctuate.

The following plot of Monthly Income parameters shows that lower monthly income does higher rate of attrition.

The plot below giving results of Overtime parameters. The plot show that attrition rate there is a relatively higher percentage of people working overtime in the group of those who left, an observation confirmed by our barchart. This is only an assumption at this point, meaning there is not that much certainty about this, especially at higher values of X and Y (due to the lack of data).

#### Correlation Plot

The following is correlation plot that shows there is week correlation between some parameters. Our targeted Attrition showed poor correlation with other parameters, which can tell us that correct classification of leaving employees was not only because one aspect of parameters. Attrition itself is more likely to depend on combination of attributes rather than on a single one.

#### Summary

Employee attrition analysis can help guide decisions, to predict which variable become the bigger impact on employee attrition. We could use analytics carefully to avoid mistrust from employees and use them with employee feedback to make the best decisions possible to prevent attrition.

## Info

Develop by Shelloren (theshelloren@gmail) Try my shiny prediction