If you are a manager and you cannot answer this then how can you improve your business? There are many reasons people don’t leave, and many I will not cover because they are very specific. The main reasons people leave: Better offer elsewhere and lack of business support are generally the two most common. There are others like no room to grow, etc but I will just look at these two leading ones.
Better offer elsewhere
Firstly let’s work out why they were looking or ‘available’, were they just approached on the ‘street’; employees will make themselves available when things aren’t working for them anymore. You need good communication flowing to best prevent loosing good staff. Sometimes you will need to reassess and look at the market and make sure you are not ‘abusing’ them. Employees want to feel valued and appreciated, not like they are given everybody’s work now the ‘have been here long enough’.
Enquire you staff member to see what you might be able to offer to keep them, you need to work out what they are worth. The saying ‘everybody is replaceable’ is only partially true, a seat/workstation can be filled easily; sometimes the knowledge and the work power that one member does is not replaceable.
Lack of Business Support
This is your area as a manager to step up, have you asked way too much of an individual that they have laid down huge sacrifices with promises of it paying off? In the article about the pay-off people often have given you a time-frame they are willing to ‘suffer’ doing certain things for before it has taken away their ‘reason for work’. They have lost family time and given to the company on promises and they end up feeling left with only a paycheck at the end of it.
Key to killing this one is integrity and honesty; don’t let people get to the end of their tether before it blows us. There are warning signs, if your staff and you have the communication window open; they might inform you that the current structure is not working for them. Left ignored for long enough they will go elsewhere.
Why do we want to keep staff?
The cost to a HR department for recruiting and training new staff is a big expense; in order to keep a good hardworking staff member who is being offered more money elsewhere, you should be able to show the loss to the company and the ‘downtime’ between that person leaving and filling the roles, as well as lack of company knowledge to the new staff etc etc.
Regular check-ins is important making sure you are doing the best you can to ensure your team is happy and productive. Be a leader and not a boss, earn your teams respect and you will find there is more tolerance in them for unpleasant changes to rosters or workloads. You cannot make everyone happy all the time, but you can start to make things pleasant for most of the team.
My consistency is key article talks about as managers being consistent whether that is offering internal promotions, or sharing around the benefits to a role. When favourites are chosen it creates bad team morale, which can often also lead to staff deciding to leave. As adults we don’t have to ‘play with everybody’ we have to feel appreciated and valued as a professional.
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