Employee Retention Starts Before Anyone Reaches the Office

Employee retention is quietly being shaped by something most HR teams don't measure: the daily commute. In Istanbul alone, workers lost 112 hours to rush hour traffic in 2025, and a joint survey by Kariyer.net and Volt Lines found that roughly 75% of employees have considered changing jobs or relocating because of theirs. The same pattern shows up well beyond Turkey, just with different numbers attached, and here's what it means for how companies think about keeping their people.

The commute is a retention problem, not a traffic problem

Most exit interviews never ask about the commute directly. It shows up as "better opportunity" or "work-life balance" instead, and the real driver gets lost.

Academic research backs this up. Economists at the University of Zurich found that people with longer commutes report consistently lower wellbeing, and that this burden isn't offset by higher pay or cheaper housing the way classical economic theory predicts [5]. Researchers call this the "commuting paradox": employees keep absorbing a real cost that never gets compensated.

The data tells a more specific story. In the US, 23% of employees have left a job over a bad commute, and that number climbs to 34% among workers aged 18 to 34 [4].

In the UK, almost half of workers, 49%, say they would consider changing jobs for a shorter or more enjoyable commute [3]. The average UK employee also spends more than 11 days a year commuting, at a cost of nearly £1,000 [3], turning the commute into a measurable cost, not just an inconvenience.

Most companies still treat commute time as background noise. The numbers suggest it belongs on the same list as pay and management quality when we talk about why people leave.

What employees told us: the Kariyer.net x Volt Lines survey

We partnered with Kariyer.net to ask 1,914 employees across Turkey directly how their commute affects their career decisions. The results split into three clear patterns: how commute shapes career decisions, how it feels day to day, and what it actually costs.

Career decisions. Almost 9 in 10 respondents, 89%, said commute time is a factor they weigh when evaluating a job offer, and 36.1% said they would turn down a role outright if the commute were too long [1]. Among people already employed, 75% said they are considering changing jobs or relocating because of commute difficulties [1]. This is the majority experience, not a fringe complaint.

The daily experience. Only 18% of employees describe their commute positively, and 26.6% say they feel burned out before the workday even starts [1]. Part of the problem is timing: 70% of employees begin work before 8:30, compressing everyone into the same rush hour [1].

The transport mode itself matters too. Driving or riding in a company vehicle rates as the most relaxing option, while public buses, metro, and multi-transfer trips rate as the most stressful [1]. Company shuttles land in an unusual spot: they show up as both the most relaxing and the most stressful mode depending on the ride, which points to inconsistent quality as the real issue, not the shuttle model itself [1].

The cost. Only 32.5% of employees have their transport costs fully covered by their employer, the rest pay out of pocket, most commonly between 2,001 and 3,000 TL a month [1]. Employees also think this time should count as work: 78% said commute time should be part of paid working hours, and 62% said so with no hesitation at all [1].

Istanbul adds its own layer to all of this. Workers there lost 112 hours to rush hour traffic in 2025 alone [2], time that comes directly out of the hours people would otherwise spend resting, with family, or simply not thinking about work before they have even arrived at the office.

For more detail on how structured shuttle models can change this experience day to day, see our earlier piece on why companies are moving away from ad hoc personnel transport toward organized shuttle service.

Turkey vs. the world: how the numbers line up

It would be easy to assume Turkey's numbers are an outlier, shaped by Istanbul's particular traffic reputation. The global data suggests otherwise; it is a matter of degree, not a different problem entirely.

Turkey's figures sit notably higher than the UK and US numbers, which makes sense given Istanbul's traffic density and the limited public transport options in many working districts. But the direction of the finding is the same everywhere we looked: commute quality is a measurable factor in whether people stay, and increasingly, in whether they accept an offer at all.

What this means for hiring and retention strategy

If commute stress is already showing up in quit rates, it is reasonable to assume it also shows up earlier, at the offer stage. Our own survey data confirms this directly: 36.1% of Turkish employees say they would decline a job over its commute alone [1], not quietly walk away after accepting.

This changes how we think about transportation. It is not simply a perk to list on a benefits page, it functions closer to compensation and flexibility, factors that candidates weigh before they accept a role at all.

What struck us most in this data wasn't the size of the numbers, it was how invisible the problem stays until someone finally asks about it. As an HR team, we're used to tracking compensation, growth, and culture. This was a reminder that the road to the office deserves the same attention.

If you want to see live data on how satisfied your employees actually are with their commute, or exactly how many minutes they spend in traffic and how far they walk to reach their stop, our solutions pages show how this kind of tracking works in practice.

Request a demo to see what this could look like for your own team.