The top 5 reasons people stay in their jobs.

As a Gen-Xer who is used to staying in jobs for a least a decade I watch my job-hopping millennial work colleagues with abject fascination.

How can they be bothered changing jobs so often?

Still, I am a creature of habit, equal parts loyal and lazy. Plus, I’ve been lucky enough to have three really good jobs and one of the reasons I’ve loved each and every one of them is the friends I made while I was there.

Now according to a recent career survey, it seems having awesome work colleagues is the main reasons people love their jobs and stay longer. In fact five main reasons have been identified by human resources firm Jouta.

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1. The work is exciting and challenging;

2. There is career growth, learning and development;

3. The people are great;

4. The pay is fair;

5. They’ve got a good boss.

With colleagues being such an important reason people stay in a job, it seems money spent organising social activities for workers is worth every cent. The stronger the relationships workers have with each other, the longer they will stay in the job.

That means drinks, team building, running clubs, birthday celebrations and farewells are all excellent ways of reducing the expense of workers leaving.

Ask Bossy gives some great advice to a listener who landed her dream job but it's nothing like what she seemed.

There are plenty of benefits to sticking it out in the same job for a good number of years. Firstly it looks good on your CV if you have been loyal to an employer for a number of years as opposed to having a history of changing jobs every year or two. There are financial benefits as well. Think of the accumulation of annual leave, long service leave which I've only earned once (but boy was the pay out good) not to mention superannuation, and staying in the same job gives you time to rise up the ranks and gain seniority.

Who doesn't want the chance to lead a team and boss a few beloved work colleagues around?