WHY ARE OUR BEST EMPLOYEES QUITTING????

1.0 Introduction

Every firm wants to retain their best talents for as long as possible. However, the top performing employees are often the ones of the first to quit. This is costly and disruptive to the organization as it has to keep hiring and/or training new employees and it affects the quality and quantity of production and demotivates the other members of their respective teams as well. None the less, best talents can be retained.

Proper communication channels, attention and involvement, self development of employees through training, may be a greatest deterrent to turn overs. One may also require to provide employees with opportunities to learn new skills, prepare for more advanced career positions, as well as achieve both professional and personal growth whereby a powerful eLearning platform with support for skills management (skills gap testing, setting up custom learning paths, e.t.c) like eFront, can offer employees a clear path forward and decrease turnover.

All in all, getting employees to stay is not a walk in the park, nor all problems have a quick solution. For the best results, employees' investment is key, just like one would invest in their firms.

2.0 Tips to Preventing and Outflux of the best employees

a.) Not feeling appreciated

An employer may value their employees as important assets to their company, but that wont make the employees stay unless one makes them also feel valued.There are few things more demotivating for an employee than to feel unappreciated — as if their work doesn’t matter. This can be the fastest way to losing a valued employee. So much, in fact, that research has proven that employees that feel that they are valued and inspired, are more likely to stay than those that are merely paid more. Achieving job satisfaction is a more important factor towards lesser employee churn than salary. By and by, this should not be an excuse to pay your employees poorly. A good salary, a raise and/or bonus, is also a good way to show your employees that they’re appreciated. It’s just that other concerns, like motivation and trust, can be even more important.

b.) Office politics

It’s not just the routine or the daily grind that gets employees to leave but office politics, particularly the back-stabbing kind, will do that just as effectively. Some employees revel, and even thrive in such an environment, but those are not the kind of employees you want to keep and protect but rather the silently productive ones that focus on their work.

Therefore, you need to build an open environment, one that fosters collaboration and where the way to get ahead is to prove your worth to the rest of your team and your manager, by working harder or smarter than the rest — as opposed to playing petty office games and going behind people’s backs.

c.) Over-working

Frequent death marches and impossible deadlines are another surefire way to get employees looking to jump ship. While the occasional overtime when there’s an especially important project might be justified, when extreme demands become the norm, morale and employee retention are at stake.

For such a situation, one might want to reconsider their management style may be through leadership and culture change programs emphasizing on soft-skills and project management. Operational excellence and productivity can be achieved by maintaining sane office and/or working hours as it is usually about working smarter not harder. Besides, beyond some point, what one achieves out of keeping staff for long hours is sub-par work (or, worse, people merely pretending to work).

d.) No clear progress path

Employees, and especially good ones, don’t just want a job, they want a career which if they don't find it in your firm, they commence seeking for their next opportunity. Keeping people for years in the same position, with no clear career advancement path, makes them feel trapped and unappreciated. One should offer their employees a path forward from early on, informing them about possible career opportunities during their initial onboarding process and helping those that are worth it to move along that path.

A comprehensive training program helps with all the above. Not only does it help your employees prepare for more advanced roles and responsibilities; it also helps you gauge their suitability for promotion, at least as far as their training performance is concerned.

And while not everybody can be promoted, the presence of an official training program, where employees study as a group, and which has transparent results, will help those left behind understand why some of their peers are promoted and hopefully, motivate them to do better next time.

e.) Stuck in a rut

Some employees find focusing on what they already know, day in and day out, comforting but for others, perhaps most, it can be, if not a nightmare, then an obvious sign that they must start looking for another job.

However, this can be controlled by:

• Allow employees to handle different aspects of the operations, and have them tackle different tasks and explore new workflows
• Some will appreciate the variety (and want to keep rotating through different roles), while others will leverage the opportunity to get a broader picture of the available tasks and responsibilities to find their particular niche in the company and stay there.

Therefore, don’t just randomly assign new responsibilities, throwing your employees head-in into uncharted waters will only serve to stress and unnerve them.

Instead, keep a track of their skills and have them go through an online training regime that will help them build upon their existing skills and acquire new ones. Having them complete a survey will also help you determine which positions are more popular, and which new skills your training program should focus on.

A successful training program should offer ones employees the confidence to tackle things outside of their regular responsibilities and enable them to get started faster and make fewer mistakes while doing so.

f.) Unfair Compensation

Usually, the best employees are highly talented, self-driven, and motivated individuals, and are aware of it as well as know their value and tend to use that to their advantage when job searching. When unfairly compensated, they start looking for new opportunities as they feel more confident in their ability to get another job.

Compensation isn’t just about money. A lot of times the company’s budget truly doesn’t allow for a significant increase in salary, so it’s important to think about other factors that add value to the employee. This can be a title change that comes with increased responsibility, access to senior leadership for mentoring, or rewards like bonus, vacation days or a flexible schedule e.t.c.

g.) Being stifled.

Top performers are passionate about the work that they do and eagerly take the lead on a projects or head up new initiatives. They want to be able to pursue opportunities and explore new ideas at work. Too often this passion is stifled and they’re told to put their ideas aside and focus simply on the tasks they’re given. This is detrimental in a myriad of ways, most notably to employee engagement. This hits two-fold as well - if they’re being stifled they’re also likely not being challenged.

Don’t force your top performers to work a certain way unless it’s absolutely required that they follow a specific process. This frustrates them, as they know that they can both accomplish the task at hand as well as focus on their ideas without affecting their performance. If the outcome is successful it shouldn’t matter how they’ve gotten their results. Allow them to explore different approaches to doing things and exercise their creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.

h.) Lack of professional challenge or under-utilization of their potential.

Top performers become disengaged when they aren’t being challenged at work. They thrive on working towards goals and being pushed outside of their comfort zones. Set stretch goals for them to achieve and they’ll work hard to meet them. Give them nothing but tasks that are easy to accomplish, and they’ll quickly get bored. Create stimulating work and your top performers will thrive.

Be careful that you aren’t simply piling on extra work, as that’s not challenging, but rather annoying to the employee. The challenge should be something that stimulates them either intellectually or creatively. Have top performers work on a project that isn’t going well and let them figure out ways to improve it. Create opportunities for them to exercise their brainpower and utilize their skills.

i.) Bad Leadership and poor management

High-performing employees often leave a company due to frustration with their direct supervisors. At times this frustration is rooted in disagreements over work philosophy, lack of resources, lack of professional development or lack of opportunity to grow or within the organization. Therefore, team leaders need to recognize what motivates each of their team members as individuals, and adapt management styles accordingly to ensure each person in the team is engaged and provided with sufficient challenges and opportunities to keep them on the team for the longer haul.

j.) Lack of trust and autonomy

Trust can either keep or end the services being rendered by employees. lack of employee trust by leaders cause micromanagement thus constantly questioning their decisions and requiring them to seek approval on everything they do. High performing employees don’t typically need this level of oversight but instead thrive in environments where there is a high level of trust and autonomy.

Leaders who struggle with trusting their employees end up creating restrictive work environments that cause employee stress, anxiety and poor performance. Good employees don’t want to work in a job where they’re not trusted by leadership. If you want to attract and keep great employees, it all begins with you. Your job as the leader is to trust and guide your team, to support them in their roles and let them shine. When you learn to let go and trust your team, they will deliver at levels you never even imagined. You’ll not only attract, but keep, better employees who are motivated, enthusiastic and productive.

k.) Lack of respect

If an employee isn’t receiving the respect they know they’ve earned and deserve then you will be hard pressed to get them to stay.

Respect could mean how they’re treated by managers and coworkers, or the types of assignments and projects they receive to work on. When people say they left a job because they weren’t paid enough, it normally means the company didn’t respect their work and abilities enough to compensate them appropriately. Again…it’s all about respect. If an employee’s abilities aren’t respected enough to receive appropriate compensation or be given projects that challenge and utilize their abilities and skills, they will leave. If they are mistreated by others within the company, it’s because of a lack of respect.