5 Reasons Why Good Employees Leave

It's pretty amazing how you always hear managers complain about their best employees leaving, the truth is, the departure of any good employee can be costly and very disruptive to the company.  There are a number of reasons why employees decide to up and leave the company. Most of them are not personal, but they are a sign of a poor workplace environment. 

Managers have to realise that in most cases employees don't leave the company but they leave them instead. This can easily be avoided; all that is required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager's part.

Here are the common mistakes that happen in a workplace that cause the employee to leave:

1.   Promotion Issues

Many employees leave jobs because there is no upward mobility, no matter how hard they work or how well they succeed, there are no opportunities for advancement into higher and more demanding positions. Alternatively, when you have worked your tail off only to get passed over for a promotion that is given to a colleague who is less qualified or less capable, now that is a massive insult!  

No wonder good people leave.

2.   When hard work is not recognised

It's easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially to the company's top performers who are highly motivated. Managers to need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good, as for some might be an incentive while others are public recognition.

When employees do good work, they should be recognized financially and publicly. Otherwise, someone else will.

3.   Managers don't care about their employees.

Employees don't need to be friends with their boss but they need to have some sort of a good working relationship. A majority of employees leave their jobs because the relationship with their managers is fractured.  Smart companies invest in up-skilling their managers on how to balance being professional and the human relation aspect.  This will go a long way in ensuring that bosses celebrate employees’ success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates.  

It's impossible to work for someone eight-plus hours a day when they aren't personally involved and don't care about anything other than your production yield.

4.   Poor Management

According to research, one of the major reasons cited in exit interviews is bad management. Bad management practices deflate employee morale; causes stress and cost the company more than just the cost of high turnover.  Managers need to have sufficient emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills to manage people; therefore, companies need to invest in empowering their manager in training soft skills.

5.    A Toxic Work Environment

A toxic work environment is any job where the work, the atmosphere, the people, or any combination of those things makes you so dismayed it causes serious disruptions in your life. Organisations need a workplace culture where people can unplug and relax, something as seemingly minor as snacks at meetings can make a big difference, planned social events can also go far to gain employee loyalty and forestall a toxic work environment.

As a manager, if you want your best people to stay, you need to think carefully about your conduct and how you treat your employees.  You need to create an environment that makes them want to work for you.

The cost of hiring the wrong person

 Hiring a wrong person for the job can be an expensive exercise!

In a study done by Career Builder survey in 2012, it was reported that 69 percent of employers reported that their companies have been adversely affected by hiring a wrong person that year, with 41 percent of those businesses estimating the cost to be over $25,000, for smaller companies where every employee often juggles many important responsibilities, the cost of bad hire can be even more devastating.

Here are some of the effects of hiring a wrong person:  

The Financial Cost

Making a wrong appointment not only wastes the company’s time, it costs money because you are not only paying a salary to someone who can’t perform to your expectations, but might incur additional training costs and in extreme cases you may also incur the cost of severance pay where the employee is let go.

The Employee Low Morale

When you are spending your time and money trying to correct your mistake of hiring the wrong person, the rest of your team may become disengaged; it’s difficult to stay upbeat when one team member requires so much attention or manages to bring the whole team down.  As a manager you stand a risk of some staff questioning your judgment and will start to doubt the company’s leadership.

The Reputation of the business

The company’s reputation can weaken as customers come to realize that the company is performing below the required standards. Your company brand will be jeopardised if you continue keeping an unsuitable person in the company.

 Managers Lose Time

If you have ever supervised a poorly performing employee, you know how time-consuming it can be and as a manager you need to work harder to maintain team moral and make sure that service delivery is not negatively affected. Your team goals may take longer to achieve as time is wasted on performance reviews and potentially ‘fixing’ problems that were made.

Rather than wasting all the time and money making bad recruitment choices, the next time you need to recruit, make sure of the following:

1.     Have a clear idea of the job requirements;

2.     Draft an accurate job description;

3.     Conduct background and reference checks;

4.      Ensure the candidate is a right cultural fit;

5.     And lastly, trust your instincts;