Data Science Insights
Vol. 4 No. 2 (2026): Journal of Data Science Insights

Predictive Analytics for Employee Attrition Prediction Using Decision Tree and Random Forest: A 10-Fold Cross-Validation Study

Arianto Tarigan (Universitas Lancang Kuning)



Article Info

Publish Date
31 Aug 2026

Abstract

Employee attrition is a major human-resource challenge because unexpected employee departures can increase recruitment and training costs, disrupt operational continuity, and reduce organizational productivity. This study investigates a machine-learning-based predictive analytics approach for employee attrition prediction using Decision Tree and Random Forest with 10-fold cross-validation. The study uses the IBM HR Analytics Employee Attrition dataset, comprising 1,470 employee records and 35 attributes. Data preprocessing includes target-label assignment, missing-value handling, categorical-to-numerical transformation, and normalization. The models are implemented in RapidMiner and evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and confusion matrix analysis. The results show that Random Forest outperforms Decision Tree, achieving an accuracy of 85.44% compared with 83.06% for Decision Tree. Random Forest also obtains higher recall for the Attrition = Yes class, increasing from 8.44% with Decision Tree to 14.35%. Despite the improvement, both models exhibit limited minority-class detection, indicating that class imbalance remains a key challenge. Tableau-based exploratory visualization further indicates that factors including MonthlyIncome, OverTime, JobSatisfaction, and TotalWorkingYears are associated with employee attrition. The findings demonstrate that predictive analytics can support data-driven employee-retention decision-making, while future work should address class imbalance and investigate more advanced classification and explainability techniques.  

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jdsi

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering

Description

Data Science Insights, with ISSN 3031-1268 (Online) published by PT Visi Media Network is a journal that publishes Focus & Scope research articles, which include Data Science and Machine Learning; Data Science and AI; Blockchain and Advance Data Science; Cloud computing and Big Data; Business ...