Every company wants to hold on to their best employees, but when your top employees start leaving one after another, you know you have a problem on your hands.
However, ignoring the reasons and underlying issues which cause your best employees to quit might cost your company greatly.
As a company, you spend time and money on your recruiting process ensuring you’re hiring the best people. What many companies overlook, though, is how they need to work even harder to keep their valuable employees around and stop them from jumping ship.
Read on why your best talent keeps leaving you and what you can do to make them stay.
No recognition
It’s not rocket science that all of us crave appreciation for a job well done. One of the main reasons your best employees leave is because their efforts and contributions are not recognised. If your top talent is constantly performing above average but do not receive any recognition, they will stop putting as much effort into their work and will ultimately start searching for another job. A simple “Great job” or a proverbial pat on the back goes a long way in motivating employees. When employees feel appreciated, it brings out the best in them, and they tend to stay and deliver better results. It’s been pointed out time and again, that employee recognition is key to employee satisfaction, which leads to employee retention.
Poor communication
A relationship cannot thrive without good communication. In the same way, consistent communication between an employee and his or her manager is the basis for a healthy work environment. When you make a concerted effort to know your employees, and they feel comfortable talking to you — it facilitates a productive workplace where people feel comfortable to contribute new ideas, collaborate, share, and support one another. Your best employees are likely to be more engaged when they feel their managers are invested in them as people, and not as resources. Effective communication ensures your employees know they are being heard and are not being ignored by the company.
Overworked employees
Top performers usually quit when they are being overworked over long periods of time or even suffer from a burnout. When your best employees are consistently given more work due to their colleagues’ low productivity levels, they tend to feel frustrated like they’re being punished for their high performance. There’s a difference between giving your top talent more work because they’re the only one equipped to handle the matter and continuously piling on extra tasks. Your top employees wouldn’t mind taking on a bigger workload, if you give them some sort of promotion that highlights their increased responsibility. However, if you only expand their workload without giving them anything in return, sooner or later, they will search for another job that provides them with the opportunities they deserve.
No opportunity for development
Employees require a certain degree of autonomy to explore new ideas, experiment with different designs and develop their own working style. When your best employees feel unchallenged, that’s when work quality declines and employee morale remains low. People will begin to look for another opportunity when they feel stagnant in their roles and there’s no room for improvement. Utilising your employees’ full skill set encourages them to grow and nurture their skills and develops their confidence in solving similar challenges. When employees are able to see how their work contributes to the company’s development, it’ll help them rediscover the purpose of their work and gives them a reason to stay. For top performers, learning new skills and having the opportunity to cultivate these skills shows them you’re invested in their future, which aids in retaining them.
It’s important for companies to consider why their top talent is leaving them for different opportunities. Finding the root cause goes a long way in solving the problem of why your employees are walking out the door. By paying attention to the reasons or undertaking regular feedback surveys to find out why your employees are unhappy you’ll be able to reduce the attrition rate and retain your top performers and an overall happy team.
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