The majority of reasons why employees leave their job are down to their employer. The organisation’s environment and the individual’s perception of their job are all under the control of the employer.
The best way to retain people is to engage with them regularly. Are they happy with their work? If you stay in touch with your employees, you can manage staff turnover more successfully. Are the systems, processes, and requirements in your company supportive of your people?
Do they support the most important needs of your people for meaningful work, market compensation and benefits, and the ability to have an effect on their work and workplace? Most importantly, do they make your people want to stay?
Find out why employees start to search for another job, before they hand their notice in! Wonderful opportunities do occasionally drops into someone’s lap, this is not usually the case though.
Here are seven reasons why people leave their job. You can manage all of them to retain your top talent.
1. Relationship with Managers
Employees are not always best friends with their manager but they should have a positive working relationship. Their manager is a constant part of their daily working routine so a poor relationship can have a huge impact.
A negative relationship with a manager will undermine engagement, confidence, and commitment. According to many sources, a ‘bad manager’ is the number one reason why employees quit their job.
Most ‘bad’ managers are promoted because they are great at the technical part of their role. However, the skills to be a great manager will be very different to the skills that make them great at the job they were promoted from. These managers are termed ‘accidental’ managers, and they can be the most destructive to your business.
The good news is that almost all managers can improve their skills with training and development.
2. Relationships between Co-workers
Good relationships between co-workers helps to retain your people. Managers should be aware of the quality of working relationships and intervene if problems persist and employees are unable to solve the problem themselves.
All too often managers don’t have the skills for this so they leave things to fester and small issues become lasting problems that grow into personal resentments and ultimately result in people leaving.
3. Opportunities to use Skills and Abilities
When employees use their particular skills and abilities at work, they will feel a sense pride, accomplishment, and self-confidence. They are able to stretch their capabilities even further, which in turn should improve your organisation’s productivity.
Most employees want to develop and nurture their skills. If they’re not able to do this in your business, they’ll find one where they can.
Make sure your managers understand drivers and career goals and can identify opportunities to support career progression by using effective delegation and on the job training.
4. Contribution to the Business Goals
Many businesses assume that all employees will receive communications about the vision, mission, and overall business plan, and understand their place in meeting these goals. Sometimes they don’t understand and sometimes they can’t.
Managers must help people to see where their work contributes to the execution of meeting business objectives. If they do not feel part of it, they might move on and you’ll lose their unique skillset.
5. Knowledge around Financial Stability
People who are worried about your organisations financial stability tend to leave. Continuously communicate to let your people know how the business is doing and what the organisation’s plans are for meeting goals or recovering in the future. This will create a culture of trust and respect for the management team.
6. Business Culture
The culture within your organisation impacts your workforce. Do you appreciate your people, encourage wellbeing, provide perks and demonstrate behaviour that supports this?
Is your work environment a positive place for people, conducive to satisfaction and engagement? Do you arrange events, activities or celebrations that make people feel that your organisation is a great place to work?
We can all appreciate a workplace in which management are approachable and communication is clear. Your overall culture keeps employees—or turns them away.
7. Employee Recognition
A lack of recognition can affect many of the above factors, especially culture and employee morale. Provide genuine appreciation and recognition when people do a good job, making sure that you are specific in your appreciation, focusing on the skills and abilities of the person that helped to achieve a specific outcome. Finishing each day with “Great work team” is soul destroying as it exhibits a lack of awareness of individual contribution and undermines motivation.
If you pay attention to these factors, you will reduce employee turnover and retain your most talented people. It’s expensive to recruit a new employee, Oxford Economics puts the cost of a new hire at £30,614 per employee. It makes far better business sense to use your resources to retain the people that you have already invested in.
Your People Potential deliver a 12-month Management Development Programme to help businesses to retain staff by training your Managers to coach their people to greatness. For further information call 01954 267640 or email info@yourpeoplepotential.co.uk
