Understanding Why Good Employees Leave Will Change You As a Leader
As a leader, you will always have to watch people leave. There will always be reasons for them to go. Not all of these reasons will be under your control. However, some of them will be. As a leader, an entrepreneur, or a boss you have to make sure to control the reasons that you can.
Here are a few reasons why good employees leave an organization:
They Don’t See Growth
Growth is the ultimate measure of success. When a person is growing in their career, they feel successful in life. When an individual joins an organization, the goal is to grow. When growth ceases, they start looking for options and decide to leave their current position.
Growth is not always about money. It is also about intellectual growth. Maybe you are offering the employee a good appraisal every year, but their overall growth in the organization has become stagnated. Maybe it has become a run-of-the-mill thing, where things are not as challenging as they should be.
They Don’t See New Learning
An ambitious employee will always seek opportunities to learn because that’s the only way to grow. New learning is one of the most crucial factors that any individual looks for in today’s time. When learning opportunities are limited, good employees tend to leave.
No one likes to be part of an organization that’s focused on its growth but never pays heeds to new learning opportunities for its employees.
They Don’t See A Good Culture
It’s one thing to say that we are a family, and we are in it together. It’s an entirely different thing to actually bring this into practice. It’s not what you believe is good for the organization that creates a positive culture. Rather, it’s how your team members feel about everything that makes a good culture.
I’ve seen companies where the human resource managers are really proud of what they’ve built, but the employees have an entirely different point of view. Such HR managers are living in a fallacy, and fail to realize how high their employee turnover is.
Understand Employee Psychology
As a leader, you need to make sure that employees are not leaving your organization because of the reasons mentioned above. Here’s how you can do that:
Build Concrete Growth Plans
Sit together with the managers and create a growth plan for every employee. Take inputs from individuals, and see what they have in mind when they think of growth. It is important to have individuals in the loop because that’s how you define their growth since every individual will have a different definition of growth.
For some, growth would mean leading a team, while for others it would be working on more than one project simultaneously. You need to sit with the managers and prepare a strategy, which the managers can discuss with team members to build a concrete growth plan and work on it accordingly.
“Build concrete growth plans by keeping your team together. Start using ProofHub to collaborate.”
Inspire Them To Learn
No one would like to leave an organization and start anew if they are getting opportunities to learn there. As a leader, it is your responsibility to make sure that learning never ceases.
One of the best ways to ensure this is to invest in online learning programs. Give employees the opportunity to learn new technology, get certified so that they can flaunt it. sponsor their courses, so that they feel you are genuinely interested in supporting their career.
Invest In Your Work Culture
This is perhaps the biggest factor, in today’s time, why employees leave. To make sure that you do it right, firstly understand what work culture means to today’s workforce.
Work culture, to me, is an assortment of different factors that include your infrastructure, your policies, your workflow, and the way you treat your employees overall. Let us discuss these factors in detail:
- Office infrastructure
Whether you are renting a place or own one, it is totally worth it to invest in its infrastructure. This includes buying cozy furniture that creates a vibe. Investing in the latest technology like computers and laptops, instead of keeping obsolete gadgets. Lighting and painting of office interiors also speak a lot about the culture that you want to represent, so choose it wisely.
I’ve personally seen offices that continue to use old devices, thinking that they are working just fine whereas the employees continue to complain about them being slow, turning off regularly, and so on. If you want your team members to deliver productive work, give them the right tools to do their job.
Small things like cutlery in the pantry, a coffee machine, ample kitchen furniture for people to sit and talk. All these might look too small to be noticed, but trust me they make a big difference in building a good company culture.
- Practice What You Preach
‘We are a family.’
It’s one thing to say it, it’s completely different to make your employees feel it. People don’t like to work for leaders who don’t practice what they preach.
Rather than always saying that we have a good company culture, show it. It’s not when
For instance, focusing more on the productive work done instead of just counting the number of hours a person was on their desk. Showing trust in their work.
- Give and take feedback
Feedback is one of the strongest pillars of company culture. There are organizations where employees feel scared to share feedback. And then there are companies where employees don’t feel motivated to share feedback because they know it will fall on deaf ears. Both situations are toxic for your work culture.
In such circumstances, the employee is going to stick with your company only for as long as they don’t get another job. Don’t expect such employees to put an ounce of extra effort into their work.
- Exit interviews
Hold exit interviews.
That’s the golden rule to improve your employee handling efforts.
Employees are like the travelers that you meet on a journey. Not all of them will have the same end destination. However, you both will travel some part of your life’s journey on the same path. When leaving, you don’t want to end it on a bad note.
This is exactly what exit interviews do. They give your employee an opportunity to put in front of you the reasons why they are leaving. You might have lost time to stop them by then, but you can surely learn a lesson from them for the future.
Do It From Your Heart
It’s understandable that you’ve built a business — it’s your baby. You’ve put your heart and soul into it, and you expect your employees to do the same as well.
They will automatically do it, if you will put your heart into caring for them, and not just for YOUR BUSINESS. How will an employee know that you have their benefits and future goals in mind if you will not show it?
Be genuine in showing emotions; it should reflect that you actually care about their well-being. It should not seem plastic; that’s what it is these days. Leaders do things just because it makes their business look cool, whereas in reality, a toxic work culture is thriving within the organization. Don’t let that happen.
Care For People And They Will Care For You
I’d like to conclude this article with this quote from Richard Branson — “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
You have to invest in people, care for them and treat them like you actually do if you don’t want them to leave. I hope the points I’ve mentioned here will help you understand employee psychology better and you will be able to use it for the good of your business and employee growth.
Good luck!
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Author Bio:
Sandeep Kashyap is the Founder and CEO of ProofHub — leading project management and collaboration software. He’s one person always on the lookout for innovative ideas about filling the communication gap between groups, teams, and organizations. You’ll find him saying, “Let’s go!” instead of “Go!” many times a day. That’s what makes him write about leadership in a way people are inspired to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.
Also Read:
1. Setting Realistic Expectations: Leading From The Front
2. 9 Clear-Cut Signs Of What Great Leadership Looks Like
3. The Untapped Powers of a Motivated Team (and how to unleash them)
