Why do your best people leave?

One of the most costly and disruptive thing to a business is, when good employees leave.

Managers tend to blame high staff turnover on anything and everything but ignore the main issue: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers!

Senior managers have taken a simple look at why this happens and identified that steps can be taken in order to avoid this happening. All that is needed is a new perspective, some care and managerial effort.

In order to understand how to foster and support our best employees, we must first understand the negative behaviour of our managers and how these actions have turned good employees, away.

1.    They overwork people

It is very tempting to pile extra work on your best people, as managers, we want the job done right. However, this can have an extremely negative effect on the team. Not only do the top employees feel the strain and become over-worked and experience high levels of stress, the rest of their team realise work is being allocated away from them, this will damage their self-esteem and motivation.

2.    They hire and promote the wrong people

Good, hard-working employees want to work with like-minded professionals. If managers don’t take the time to find and hire great people the overall productivity and morale of the team declines. Furthermore, promoting the wrong people is even worse. When you have worked really hard for a promotion it is extremely frustrating and even insulting when it is given to someone who has glad-handed their way to the top. There is nothing quite as demoralising as your efforts being wasted and ignored.

3.    They don’t let people pursue their passions

Talented employees are passionate and excited for the future. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions increases productivity and job satisfaction. However, many managers often fear that if they allow their best employees to pursue their goals they will grow bored of their position and want to leave. Also, due to the expansion of passion and thoughts they feel they will lose focus and productivity will decrease. However, this is not the case. When employees are able to pursue their passions at work they experience flow, a euphoric state of focus that is five times more productive than the norm.

If you want your best employees to stay you need to be aware of your behaviours and how the people around you. It is important to remember that good employee’s talent gives them an abundance of job options. You need to make them want to work for you.