Hopefully this article
will inspire you… have a nice reading!!
Why
do talented employees leave companies?
Come to think of it. This is almost 100% true. Read below & find out the
answer.
Early this year, Arun, an old friend who is a senior software
designer, got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work
in its India
operations developing a specialized software. He was
thrilled by the offer.
He had heard a lot about the CEO of this company, a charismatic man
often quoted in the business press for his visionary attitude.
The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place
employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new
office, the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb
food.
Twice Arun was sent abroad for training. "My learning curve is the
sharpest it's ever been," he said soon after he joined. "It's a real
high working with such cutting edge technology."
Last week, less ! than eight months after he joined, Arun walked out
of the job. He has no other offer in hand but he said he couldn't take
it anymore. Nor, apparently, could several other people in his
department who have also quit recently. The CEO is distressed about
the high employee turnover.
He's distressed about the money he's spent in training them. He's
distressed because he can't figure out what happened.
Why did this talented employee leave despite a top salary? Arun quit
for the same reason that drives many good people away. The answer lies
in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization.
The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and
was published in a book called First Break All The Rules.
It came up with this surprising finding: If you're losing good
people,look to their immediate supervisor. More th! an any other
single reason, he is the reason people stay and thrive in an
organization. And he's the reason why they quit, taking their
knowledge, experience and contacts with them. Often, straight to the
competition.
"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the
challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better
perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly a
manager issue." If you have a turnover problem, look first to your
managers. Are they driving people away?
Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money,
and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of
this depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses
seem to happen to good people everywhere. A Fortune magazine survey
some years ago found that nearly 75 per cent of employees have
suffered at the hands of difficult superiors. You can leave one job to
find - you guessed it, another wolf in a pin-stripe suit in the next
one.
Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss is possibly the worst,
directly impacting the emotional health and productivity of employees.
Here are some all-too common tales from the battlefield:
Dev, an engineer, still shudders as he
recalls the almost daily firings his boss subjected him to, usually in
front of his subordinates. His boss emasculated him with personal,
insulting remarks. In the face of such rage, Dev completely lost the
courage to speak up. But when he reached home depressed, he poured
himself a few drinks, and magically, became as abusive as the boss
himself. Only, it would come out on his wife and children. Not only
was his work life in the doldrums, his marriage began cracking up too.
Another employee Rajat recalls the
Chinese torture his boss put him through after a minor disagreement.
He cut him off completely. He bypassed him in any decision that needed
to be taken. "He stopped sending me any papers or files," says Rajat.
"It was humiliating sitting at an empty table. I knew nothing and no
one told me anything." Unable to bear this corporate Siberia,
he
finally quit.
HR experts say that of all the abuses,
employees find public humiliation the most intolerable. The first
time, an employee may not leave, but a thought has been planted. The
second time, that thought gets strengthened. The third time, he starts
looking for another job. When people cannot retort openly in anger,
they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and
slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By
omitting to give the boss crucial information.
Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you
basically want to get him into trouble. You don't have your heart and
soul in the job."
Different managers can stress out
employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too
suspicious, too pushy, too critical, too nit-picky.
But they forget that workers are not
fixed assets, they are free agents.
When this goes on too long, an employee
will quit - often over seemingly trivial issue.
It isn't the 100th blow that knocks a
good man down. It's the 99 that went before. And while it's true that
people leave jobs for all kinds
of reasons - for better opportunities
or for circumstantial reasons, many who leave would have stayed - had
it not been for one man constantly telling them, as Arun's boss did:
"You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you."
While it seems like there are plenty of
other fish especially in today's waters, consider for a moment the
cost of losing a talented employee.
There's the cost of finding a
replacement. The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not
having someone to do the job in the meantime.
The loss of clients and contacts the
person had with the industry. The loss! of morale in co-workers. The
loss of trade secrets this person may now share with others. Plus, of
course, the loss of the company's reputation. Every person who leaves
a corporation then becomes its ambassador, for better or for worse.
We all know of large IT companies that
people would love to join and large television companies few want to
go near. In both cases, formeremployees have left to tell their tales.
"Any company trying to compete must
figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee," Jack Welch of
GE once said. Much of a company's value lies "between the ears of its
employees". If it's bleeding talent, it's bleeding value.
Unfortunately, many senior executives busy travelling the world,
signing new deals and developing a vision for the company, have little
idea of what may be going on at home.
That deep within an organization that
otherwise does all the right things, one man could be driving its best
people away.
