© 2013 Research Academy of Social Sciences http://www.rassweb.com 146 International Journal of Management Sciences Vol. 1, No. 5, 2013, 146-151 An Exploratory Study on Attrition Rate in the Telecommunication Sector of Bangladesh Silvia Akter 1 , Shirin Akter 2 Abstract Attrition is a highly topical topic and is a problem that many organizations are facing today. The concept of employee turnover has both narrow and broad significance. While, some organizations simply gives the inflated figures of employee retention others raise the issue and try to find measures to curb this dilemma. Telecommunication sectors have experienced high attrition rate in the past, though a good amount of research has been done on the topic but still the problem is not completely unraveled. The focus of this research is to study the trends of attrition prevalent in Telecommunication sector and finding out the reasons of such turnover intentions. Indeed, the perceived job options shape up the intent of turnover but there are other factors that can be associated to the high attrition rate in the firms. Implications of pay, job profile, culture and satisfaction issues have been discussed to get the insights of the subject. Key words: Attrition, Job Satisfaction 1. Introduction From the dawn of human civilization people use ways to communication with each other and those ways to communication were changed on updated time to time because of new innovation and demand. The power of telephony is forging a new enterprise culture, from banking to agricultures to healthcare. During the last decade, telecommunication sector has grown up as one of the most competitive sector in the business world, mobile phone service providing is one of them ( Hossain & Iftekher, 2011). Bangladesh is the first South Asian country to adopt cellular technology back in 1993 by introducing Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) (BTRC, 2011a). Since then the country‟s cellular industry never locked back, now it has turned into the largest infrastructures provider within telecom sector and has created new opportunities by generating employment. (BTRC, 2011a; wikipedia, 2012f). There are six mobile phone operators in Bangladesh. Theses are Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Aritel, Citycell and Teletalk (wikipedia, 2012f). Citycell is the first mobile phone operator in Bangladesh. Today GP is the market leader and Banglalink is the market challenger, in the terms of number of subscribers they have, in Bangladesh mobile telecom industry. In Bangladesh, mobile phone subscribers are increasing very rapidly. In February 2009, the total subscribers was 45.21 million which reached 76.43 million at the end of December 2011, the figure reached 85.455 million and finally 92.10 million at the end of May 2012 (BTRC, 2011b, 2012; wikipedia 2012f). This research paper is aimed at finding out what are the underlying factors that contribute to the rate of attrition present in the Telecommunication sector and how such rate of attrition can have an adverse effect on the growth and development of this sector. This paper also intends to find out if the attrition rate has been increasing over the years and whether the emergence of more and more real estate firms is resulting in larger amount of employee turnover. The core objective of the research is to find out nature of effects of a high attrition rate on the organizations. Besides, it will also elaborate analysis on what have been the major sources of employee turnover. 2. Literature Review “Talent is a critical driver of corporate performance… a company‟s ability to attract, develop and retain talent will be a major competitive advantage far into the future,” ( Ramlall, S. (2003). 1 Department of Business Administration, East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 Department of Management, Bangladesh University of Business and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh