Perhaps the most important decision you will make in your career is who your manager will be? After all, ultimately everything will rise and fall on the strength of its leaders. One of the biggest contributing factors for your best employees quitting is not giving your employees enough opportunities to progress and develop.
It is surprising how often you hear of managers complaining about their best employees quitting, and they have good reason to do so as employees leaving is costly and hugely disruptive. Many managers tend to blame their staff turnover on many factors, but remember people don’t leave jobs, they are often leaving their managers.
Not Recognising Talents and Strengths
By not recognising your top employee’s unique strengths and talents and recognising their high performance is most definitely an engagement killer. People love to use their unique talents and strengths and should never be suppressed or they will feel their talents are going to waste and not being utilised.
The greatest managers will leverage close relationships with their employees by finding out what their strengths are and take the time to bring out the best in their employees. When managers assist with the development of their staff through their strengths and natural talents, they are more likely to engage with their team members.
Overworking Your Best Employees
Nothing deflates a good employee like overworking them. Of course, it is highly tempting to work your best people hard but as a good manager you need to find a healthy balance. If it is unavoidable to increase your top employee’s workload then perhaps it is also time to increase their job position. Talented employees will naturally take on a bigger workload but they will not stay if this is not recognised. When increasing an employee’s workload you should also look to increasing salaries, promotions and title changes. If you increase an employee’s workload without changing anything or rewarding your employees they will seek another job that gives them what they deserve.
Lack of Communication
Another mistake that leads to staff turnover is a lack of communication. As a manager, you should hold regular meetings with your employees this way your employees feel informed and will stay engaged. Mere interactions between managers and employees are not enough.
Employees value communication from their managers highly, this should not just be about tasks or jobs but also about their interests and taking an interest in their personal lives. Employees who feel as though their manager is invested in them is more likely to be engaged. Many managers are guilty of is withholding information from their staff. The reverse of this is a leader who acts responsibly by sharing information and being transparent with their team.
Micro-Management
Micro-managing can attribute largely to staff turnover. As a manager you should ask yourself, are you focusing on your team’s development? Do you truly value your staff? Secondly, are you providing your staff with consistent feedback and more importantly, are you listening to the feedback that will further support your staff’s needs. Another important question to ask yourself is how can you improve as a leader? Are you allowing your staff to give their opinion, express their creativity and allowing them to make their own decisions?
Inability to Listen
The final common mistake that leads to staff turnover is when managers fail to listen to their staff. If a manager fails to listen to their employees when they are pursuing a vision, team members will not feel valued or respected. If management do not solicit the concerns and opinions of others, especially during a change, the trust will begin to erode and morale will soon begin to diminish. Many aspire for a manager who will allow others to give input to important initiatives and the only way to do this is to first listen.
Hiring and Promoting the Wrong Employees
Your valuable, hard working employees will want to work with professionals alike. When managers hire the wrong people, this will have a huge impact on your staff turnover. Higher the wrong candidates will disrupt company culture, decrease productivity and can lead to potential loss of clients and revenue.
It is not uncommon for managers to promote their employers without considering how the candidate’s strengths and requirements of the new role align. Remember, if you remove a high performer from their existing role and transition them to another role where they are not successful, you will then be losing out on two highly functional positions. Management also influences around 70% of engagement, putting the wrong person in a role can negatively affect the rest of the team.
Eliminating many of these bad habits as a leader will keep your best employees quitting. First, it begins with self-awareness and then to figure out what leadership behaviours need to be learned and practised.
If you want to avoid your best employees quitting, you need to think carefully about how you treat them. Although your best employees may seem as if they are planning to stick around, their talent and abundance of skills also give them many options and opportunities. Make your employees want to work for you to help retain great employees.