SG Complains

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 than 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, former employees
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.