What makes good employees quit? (3 of 4)

This is the 3rd part of my series on ‘Why good employees quit?’. Yesterday’s article focused on employees feeling underutilized, impact of having a bad manager, poor management (lack of ability to motivate employees) and poor communication. My article is based upon the article https://b2b.kununu.com/blog/why-do-good-employees-quit-leave-their-job which triggered a few thoughts from me as I think about the important of minimizing voluntary turnover of key staff.

Today I will be focusing on: feeling overstressed overworked, lack of support, work-life-balance and culture. 

1.     Feeling overstressed overworked â€“ it is not hard to ‘overwork’ good employees. As managers we learn to trust their work and we depend on them highly. If this is the case we should definitely remember to appreciate and recognize these employees to avoid them feeling overstressed. We also should balance the work and challenge evenly the assignments to create opportunities for others to step up. In the absence of this good employees will become very quickly exhausted of being the only ones who can deliver a complex project or take on additional responsibilities. 

2.     Lack of support â€“ good employees expect a high-performing environment that would inspire them to continue challenging themselves. If they see that not everyone is carrying their weight of if they do not get adequate support from their managers they will disengage and leave. We all have seen examples of this. The best employees will always find new opportunities outside and will be the first to leave and you will be left with a low performing team.

3.     Work-life balance â€“ this is a hard one as we all work very hard and expect similar commitment from our teams. What has worked for me well over the years giving flexibility to my employees. They put in the extra time even on the weekends the least I can do is give them flexibility. Some of these ‘perks’ could be working from home, flex office hours, shorter Fridays, ensuring that they attend to all important events in the lives of their family/children, going to the doctor with their elder parents, etc. These small gives can make a difference in the lives of the employees and their families.

4.     Uninspiring work environment or company culture -   employees understanding that companies go through change and they will do their best to adapt to the new organization. When the culture turns toxic there are no perks that can keep a good employee stay. I personally believe that culture and leadership are the two most important elements that attract talent to a company, keep/lose talent. Understanding the importance of these factors is essential to a successful company’s long term ability to acquire/keep talent.

Tomorrow I will be focusing my final chapter on four further reasons why good employees leave: seeing good employees go, disconnect with company values, disconnect with personal/professional goals and finally changes in one’s personal life. 

Hopefully the above points were relevant to you as they definitely made me reflect on what I should do more or less as a manager to ensure that good people do not leave my organization!