Perhaps, even for the worst of a colleague, if any manager remarks on his/her leaving the organisation, “good riddance of bad rubbish” then surely such a supervisor is unworthy to be a manager of the people.
Colleagues at workplace are not chattels or part of the organisation’s fixed assets; they are humans, with flesh and warm blood gushing in their veins, who are all and always in need of being respected with emotion.
A person leaves his organisation either for better prospects or for reasons of being in a state of discomfort.
Better prospects are extremely vague; they are as wide as one can imagine. It is not restrictive to merely “better emoluments”, as is continually perceived by its everyday usage. Prospects can include, and are not limited to either, future growth opportunities, ability to learn from more professional corporate outfit, or it may even be inclusive of better training, learning and development possibilities.
The disparities between commitments made and action taken is a major provocation for employees to seek opportunities in the market. It is said, and rightly so, that employees invariably do not normally leave the organisation but they leave their managers. Now, what is the implication here? It is obvious, that while an organisation, in the minds of the employees, may enjoy a maintainable degree of trust, as being a professional outfit, yet it is the management that may lack managerial quality to sustain quality human resources (HR). The talent pool overtime starts to deplete.
Lack of motivational working environment is a major trigger for employees to jump the ship. The era of demanding loyalty or unquestionable compliance to the commands of the manager is a thing of the past. With greater awareness all around, the nature of work has changed. Direct reports now respond to professional environment that has value for internal motivation. Pep talk for motivational inducement is not the same as motivational actions, no manager must ever forget. The demand is for pride in work. As managers, when you take away either by the behavior or the stated and unstated words, the enthusiasm of coworkers, you are actually prompting the recipient to look for alternative employment. It is the failure of the manager, if he/she cannot influence the working culture of the organisation that must have an in-built mechanism for colleagues to graduate themselves into being self-propelling units of energy – No individual likes to work for Mr Grump. Instead, a “caring boss” is the best guarantee for retention of quality staff. A manager who scores low on this ingredient of emotional quotient (EQ) is unlikely to get followers to his vision, ambitions and budgets. A high rating on the EQ scale is a sure recipe for outstanding results and performance from the reports.
Organisations that fail to look at the importance of EQ, starting from the board room to the janitors get affected negatively. The ability to manage our self and manage others is highly dependent upon how intelligent supervisors are on emotional management. It is not to suggest, “Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is unimportant, it certainly is a necessary quality to be possessed by colleagues and managers, but any failure to strike a balance between IQ and EQ, in the management of human resources, usually results in higher rate of attrition.
Narcissist supervisors are the worst enemies of quality workers. Their complex of superiority, either by acquisition or by way of inheritance, makes them very complicated individuals, who ultimately become powerful barriers, to growth of individual dynamism and of new thought and action.
It is said in corporates, “you are no match to my intelligence. You haven’t learnt what I have forgotten?” Managers, who expect and demand loyalty from their surroundings, have the tendency to give submission preference over competence. Disloyalty to their personal self is unpardonable. Such attitude induces colleagues to start looking outside the orgnisation.
‘Caring’ is an attitude and not a rhetoric. Any put-on act of concern is a very thin veil that tears itself to shreds, by regular assaults made upon it, by the egoistic attitude and bad behavior of self-obsessed managers.
The communication apparatus, both going upwards and downwards, in any organisation has to be the best – it has to be open, clear and directional. If it is weak or relies heavily on not official streams of information, but self deceptively employs an attitude of acceptance of information based on hearsay and rumor-mongering, as communication tools, is another major reason, why good employees prefer to leave.
If the boss lends ears to everything that is said to him by his ‘coterie of admirers’, life for employees, can become quite a challenge and in such an environment attrition rates are usually higher. Every single word or remark the managers/supervisors use in their conversation must go through a very fine strainer, to accord acceptance to its usage, otherwise, conversation can become provocatively explosive and disastrous.
Lack of growth opportunities, due to faulty hiring and retiring policies tend to become reasons for early departure of quality talent. They leave; when it dawns, their career growth is non-existent. The organisation could be in hibernation; it could be sliding in ratings within the industry due to faulty business strategies or it could be due to reasons of having ceased to grow. A dynamically growing organisation offers better opportunities for diversification of career growth and for acquisition of new and latest skills.
Staff turnover is also high in those organisation, where the management fails to determine, what the right quantum of pressure, they can unleash upon workers for enhanced production or for achieving their respective key performance indicators (KPIs). For achieving corporate business objectives, such managers with low EQ adopt, intimidating stance, which propels colleagues to look beyond their own orgsnisation. Threats or abuses of any sorts have never been useful as a sustainable tool for making people perform beyond the standards of excellence. Contrarily though inspired internal motivation can create wonders.
Yet another major reason for employees wanting to leave any organisation is where they are witness to non-judicious performance appraisal mechanism or even the unjust reward principles. Unfair attitude during appraisals or prevalence of a culture of servitude, compliant loyalty, and at worst the existence of nepotism and favoritism are major provocations for people to move. [A young colleague in HR of an organisation that I once worked for, during annual increment exercise, would use the remark, this appraisal is of that blue-eyed, where the axiom applied has to be “case to case and face to face” basis]. Basically, meaning nepotism will prevail.
Non-clarity of the job description (JD) or in other words what role is expected of him/her is also a major reason for attrition of staff. Some colleagues are perennially left in the cold storage of the organisation; whilst some are waylaid, all, due to lack of interest from the supervisor, on how to use and deploy talented resource. A state of management confusion is used as a tool, so that the incompetent can thrive in chaos and confusion.
The HR committees, both at the management and board level, could do a wholesome good to the organisation’s future viability by making an in-depth examination of the reasons for the attrition of staff. The designation, role, status, age, and gender distribution of attrition should be looked at with microscopic interest. In this lie, usually, the tell-tale signs of the performance of the CEO and his senior management. Failure to retain quality staff is a collective failure of the board and the management.
Attrition at lower levels of the organisation chart is generally ignored and so is the short length of service, as being inconsequential.
Those who leave within three years of joining are not given any importance, which in my view is a suicidal attitude, because it is the enrichment in the younger population of the organisation that guarantees future growth and the sustainability. When any employee leaves the organisation does not merely lose a useful hand, but all the intelligence, knowledge and aptitude associated with that person. The information and expertise gathered is lost too. And to add further woes to the departure of competent colleagues is the threat that the information, so acquired by him/her, will be used by the competitors. Organisations sometimes fool themselves, even in the current day and age of ever-improving and changing technology, that they can prevent proliferation of data, by putting restrictive devices on the ports of desk-tops, laptops, etc. Information once acquired stays with the person.
Another area where an entity befools itself is to get employees to sign documents that if they decide to leave; they shall not take up employment, within the industry for “x” months/years. Any document that is signed voluntarily or under coercion of gaining employment that infringes upon constitutionally guaranteed rights will not stand the test of law, in any court.
The board must independently assess the industry average of attrition for comparison. A below industry average rate would indicate a stable and enabling corporate environment. A rate much higher is indicative of management chaos at the upper echelons of the organisation chart.
The exit interviews must be honestly summarised by the HR division and later submitted to the HR board committee/board, for review, to evaluate, the reasons cited by colleagues, who choose to leave the organisation. Attrition is linked to internal culture of the organisation.
The author is a freelance contributor