Do field officers quit the branch manager, not the company?

Over the last three quarters of FY2025-26, in the microfinance company where I head learning and development, infant attrition - people leaving within 90 days of joining - fell from 118% to 53%.

When I share that number, people ask what moved it. My honest answer is that I cannot prove one cause; retention is never one thing. But underneath the question I keep hearing an older one: do people really quit managers, not companies?

What the wider data says, and what it does not

Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores across business units. That is US workplace research, not a finding about microfinance or about India. Read the Gallup summary.

A related Gallup report says one in two employees have left a job to get away from their manager at some point in their career. That too is US research. See the Gallup report. I read both as a reason to look hard at the branch manager's role in early exits, not as proof about any one company.

In my own work, the first 90 days are where this question gets real. A new field officer does not experience "the company". He experiences one branch, one target sheet, and one manager. Whether he stays is decided there long before it is decided at head office.

Three questions a 90-day exit should answer

When an early exit lands, I read it as three questions the branch should have answered weeks earlier.

1. Was he asked how he was settling in - not as a formality, but by someone who would act on the answer?

2. Was he shown how to hit his targets, or only questioned when he missed them?

3. Did he have one named senior who owned his first month?

A "no" to any of these points at the branch before it points at the company.

The exit interview is the last conversation, not the first

By the time someone sits in an exit interview, the decision is made. What they tell you is a map for the next joiner, not a rescue for them. So read it like a map: find the week where the conversations stopped, and fix that week for the person who has just joined.

What a branch manager can do this week

You do not need a programme to start. Find your newest field officer and ask three questions. How are you settling in? What is getting in your way? What would help you hit this month's target? Then act on one answer within the week.

In my own thinking, the EmoShift lens applies here: notice the emotion before you choose the response. A new joiner who goes quiet in week three is telling you something. Listen before the exit interview does the listening for you.

One question for you

If you lead field teams, look at your last three 90-day exits. What did they actually tell you? I would like to hear.