STILL WONDER WHY YOUR STAFF ARE LEAVING YOU? – HERE’RE THE ANSWERS

Huyen Pham

As we have mentioned in the previous blog post - How Much Damage When an Employee Is Leaving Your Company? - “Many studies show that the total cost of losing an employee can range from $10,000 to almost twice annual salary.”. So, it is essential to keep your talents in the company and help them maximize their productivity. But, all of sudden, you realize that you cannot identify who the highest performer is in your organization and last time you checked, your company’s turnover rate is getting higher and higher.

Well, if you’re a manager or HR person, you are in a big trouble.

Not only does it cost you a fortune to hire, on-board, etc. a new staff, high turnover rate also makes the employee circle loose and and for specific reasons, your company performance and productivity will drop as well.

Here are some must-know captions (other than compensation) for you to find out why your staff says goodbye to you.

1. Because of you (I mean it, not a Kelly Clarkson’s song)

employee engagement OKR goalify

In a research of Gallup, they found that, “The manager accounts for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement.”.The fact is that you’ve already failed right at the moment you’re trying to figure out why employees are leaving you. But don’t worry, that’s not the main reason why this is happening, they actually are:

  • Your employees think that you don’t know what you are doing or we could say, you don’t have any specific goal. We cannot just tell our staff start working on any plan that comes up in our mind and changes every hour. Your opinions keep fighting each other since you have no defined objective and key result which could help you and employees measure the efficiency and the size of your working process. Don’t confuse your employees and leave them with
    a headache.
  • You don’t have a good relationship with your employees. You only talk to them when issues raise or when you assign tasks to them. The fact is that most of the managers are overloaded with tons of emails, paperwork and don’t have time to engage with their teammates, but maintaining a healthy relationship with your staff is essential to keep the retention rate high. Gallup also reported that the sign of good relationship and engagement is that staff are able to talk about their personal issues with you, you could cut down 3 to 5 minutes of work to talk to them. Don’t feel that you are wasting time while you could save 10 to 20K USD in that 5 minutes. Another activity that could bond your relationship is to give your employee a voice to speak out their mind.

2. They are not satisfied with their job

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People love to improve their skills and abilities. This, however, cannot be done if you always have them work on ‘minor tasks’ and same tasks every day. Gradually, employees will get bored of their own job and decide to do it with a ‘shortcut’, or worse, they just quit. There are 2 ways to explain this “minor” word.
First, you do not properly measure staff’s ability. Or secondly, due to the lack of transparency in your system, they don’t understand the important of this task or they cannot define their position in the process.

Besides, by giving challenging jobs, you’ll show your appreciation to your employees’ work and that they are indeed important to
the organization. This ‘silent award’ will help them gain more experience and refresh their mind at the same time.

3. No clear career path

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Most of the employees address the question that: “Where do you see yourself in 5 (or 10) years?” in their interview. But when they hire that employee, their offer just goes away with that interview like nothing ever happened. He or she has to work all the time but sees no future in their advancement. A recent research released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CareerJournal.com, they asked why an employee would look for another job, 35% (employees, including managers and other high position staff) answered that they were dissatisfied with their current career path: no learning recommendation, no training opportunities, no networking encouragement

Consider the case of Apple, they build up a team with 16% outstanding employees, and they get the profit margin that are 30 – 50% higher than the industry average. Apple encourages their employees to develop in their career path and in return, their profit raises.

Consequently, don’t underrate the importance of giving your employees a chance of career progression when the supply of talent is short.

4. Feedback, recognition and appreciation culture is underestimated

Lack of feedback is equal to the fact that you cannot evaluate your employee’s contribution to the organization. Constructive feedbacks will show your support and concern to them. Their issues in work could be solved easily and your issues with them (relating to turnover rate, you know) may fly away too. However, don’t be selfish that only you can send out the feedback. Nowadays, companies and global corporations are using two-way feedback approaching to improve and enhance not only their employees but also the whole system (including many high position staff).

Another problem is that you did not give them enough credit after they’ve successfully finished a task. Just imagine when you cook a wonderful meal for your partner and he or she just… silently enjoys it, this case is similar to that. Recognition demand does not just appear in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs without a reason: people tend to seek for the feel that they are doing a good job. Your act of appraisal will strengthen the engagement with employees and retain them as long as possible. Not to mention that public recognition and appreciation could positively trigger competitions between employees and as a result, their productivity might be raised.