The Top 8 ReasonsYour Best People Are About To Quit And How You Can Keep Them
If you believe all the headlines on the evening news or inthe Wall Street Journal, you’d have to conclude that the all over the world,the economy is continuing to struggle. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Employers seem to be reluctant to hire new people to their full-timepayrolls, even as corporate cash levels are at record highs.
If you’re a boss, it would be easy for you to conclude thatthe people who report to you are lucky to have a job. If you ask them to work longer hours or takeon extra responsibilities, they should be grateful – shouldn’t they? After all, they have a j-o-b.
In the US, more Americans are quitting their jobs today thanat any point in the past 4 years. InMarch, 2.475 million Americans quit their jobs. This has been steadily increasing recently from a low in late 2009 (justafter the financial collapse finally bottomed out) from a monthly rate of 1.7million quits a month.
Just think about that for a second. Even in the darkest days in the aftermath ofthe biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, 1.7 millionAmericans each month were willing to tell their bosses to “take this job andshove it.”
The world has changed. Although we’re not back to the pre-financial crisis quitting levels of 3million a month (in January 2007), people are more confident in their jobabilities than they’ve ever been since 2010.
Why are people willing to quit their jobs despite of theworsening job market?
There’s an old saying: people quit their bosses, not theirjobs.
If you want to keep the most talented members of your team,it’s time you started looking in the mirror and realize the biggest reasons whypeople quit have to do with you.
Here they are:
1. You’ve overloaded your best people with toomany responsibilities.
After layoffs and necessary cutting down ofstaff, there’s a constant job staffing question: how do we get the same amountof stuff done with fewer employees to do it? The simple answer has been to getthe remaining employees to do the jobs of 2 or 3 old employees, in addition tothe regular job responsibilities they used to have. And then a lot of bosses never revisitedstaffing responsibilities 3 or 4 years later. It’s time to take a fresh look at who’s doing what in your group andprobably redistribute how work is getting done on the team. Your best people need to be doing higherlevel stuff, not just getting lower level stuff done. Your best people will quit if they’re justcontinuing to be asked to do the same boring stuff years later.
2. You’re amicro-manager.
A lot of bosses get promoted becausethey’re perfectionists. They were ableto get a lot of work done in their old jobs to get noticed. Now, in their new jobs, they keep wanting tomake sure that whoever’s doing their old job is doing it just as well asthem. Plus, they are into all theirdirect reports’ business as well. Havingyour fingers on the pulse of what’s going on (or not going on) in your group isgood management. But, at some point, youcross the line into micro-managing. Yourworst people are probably happy for you to tell them what to doconstantly. But your best people will bedriven up the wall by this tendency. They want to know you give them a task and then enough rope to let themdo it rather than doing it for them.
3. You’renever around.
The opposite of a micro-manager is adrive-by manager. This is the boss who’sperpetually never in the office. They’renot around. They don’t check in. They give you a job to do and then check backwith you 3 months later on if it’s done yet. Lots of bosses protest that they have an “open door policy” for theirpeople to come in and talk with them whenever they need to. But, if you’re never around or – when you are– you zip in to grab something off your desk and zip back out or get on aconference call for an hour and then take off to a meeting, that’s not going toinvite a lot of your staff to come in and shoot the breeze with you.
4. You’renot in touch with how some of your hires or promotions are driving your bestpeople nuts.
It’s human nature to want to be aroundother people we like and trust. Whywould we choose to be around – and hire – people we dislike and don’ttrust? However, we usually like peoplewho like us. Even though we think we’regood at spotting people sucking up to us, it’s awfully tough when you’ve got adirect report telling you how great you are. Big problems arise when we promote based on who we like instead of on merit. One promotion or hire like that is ok, buttwo or three can sabotage a team’s morale. If you’re out of touch with who’s really talented on your team and whoyou’re promoting or hiring, it’s a matter of time before your best peopletender their resignation. Why stick around if the bozos get promoted?
5. You’venever given your people a sense of where they can go in their careers.
Nobody takes us aside out of college or evenin business school and teaches us how to sit and talk with our direct reportsabout upward career progression. As aboss, most of us just want to make sure all our work gets done. But how much do you care about getting thatnext promotion? It turns out that your people care about it just as much. Sotake the time to talk to them individually. Ask them where they want to go intheir careers – it turns out many won’t have a clue but will appreciate youshowing an interest. Talk to them abouthow they can get there, including what kinds of experiences and successes bythem would make them stand out to your bosses.
6. You runterrible meetings.
Even one of the most successful CEOs in theworld today, Google ’s Larry Page, wasn’t born with a keen understandingor respect for being a good boss as this acｃount describes. Page – a recent doctoral student at Stanford,when he started Google – thought the ideal way to run meetings was to instigatea big argument among a team. Whoever hadthe best idea, he thought, would rise to the top. Instead, he created anarchy and a lot of hurtfeelings. There are plenty of other wayto run ineffective meetings including never calling them or letting them go onand on with no real action items coming out of them. All these approaches are tremendouslymorale-sapping.
7. Youcommunicate that you care more about yourself than the team.
As a leader, you’ve got to show yourreports that you have done in the past or would be willing to do now anythingthat you’re going to ask them to do. Ifyou seem above it, you’re likely going to turn their support away fromyou. You’re going to communicate to themthat you care more about yourself than you do them. It’s tough to win back their support afterthat. So, show them that you care abouttheir career progression more than your own. Show that you want the team to winmore than you want you to win.
8. You’venever given them the big picture vision of where your group is heading or you areconstantly changing the big picture.
Some bosses are great at strategy butthey’ve got their head stuck in the clouds or like to change the group’sstrategy every quarter. Some bosses areabout as strategic as a banana. Either extreme is bad and debilitating for your staff. As a boss, you’ve got to tell the group wheretheir North Star is, the direction they’re heading in and why. Then, you’ve got to give them everything theyneed to get there. Sometimes businessconditions change and the strategy changes, but that should happeninfrequently. If you worked for yourselfas a direct report, what would you think of the strategic direction you’resetting?
It’s not too late. Before your best people quit, why don’tyou take control as a boss and prevent that from happening?
Source: forbes.com
Image: http://www.grinningplanet.com/2010/07-01/bail-boss.gif
VOCABULARY:
1. tendency- an inclination toward a particular characteristic or type of behavior.
2. merit -deserve or be worthy of (something, especially reward, punishment, orattention).
3. bozos - astupid, rude, or insignificant person, especially a man.
4. keen -having or showing eagerness or enthusiasm.
5. strategic- carefully designed or planned to serve a particular purpose or advantage
6.debilitating - making someone very weak and infirm.
QUESTIONS:
1. Do a lotof people quit in their jobs in Korea because of personal reasons?
2. What isthe most common reason why people quit their jobs in Korea?
3. Do youagree with the reasons named on the article?
4. If you'rethe boss in your own company, would you do things differently?
