Are you struggling to retain your top performers?

There is a lot of data which shows that a major reason for team members leaving an organisation is because they didn’t like or rate their boss.

“People leave managers, not companies”
Marcus Buckingham

Employees are not always honest during their exit interview because no one wants to burn bridges and some industries are extremely close knit. But you only need to look at the reviews on websites like Glassdoor to see that there are internal management and cultural issues that are not being addressed which have led to disgruntled staff voting with their feet.

As amazing as your organisational culture may be, your team will mainly have a relationship with their direct line manger and if they aren’t embodying the values of your business, they will demotivate excellent staff and cause them to leave, which will increase the hiring cost to your business.

I remember restructuring an IT department and being told by at least four individuals that if a particular person was successful in getting the manager post they would leave. Turned out that that person had been in a management position before and was moved to another position after numerous complaints were received.

However, no one had shared that information with the person, so they applied for the role. Luckily, when we interviewed I could see why they weren’t the ideal and made sure to give them feedback and put them on the leadership training programme to help them to develop the skills needed.

Now the staff in that particular organisation were able to share their issues with me because they had built a relationship with me and knew I could be trusted with their concerns, but if they didn’t have that confidence they would have just looked for another role and resigned.

Like Sophie who couldn’t understand why the staff turnover in Billy’s team was higher than all of her other managers. She would meet with all of the teams regularly and had an open-door policy for all of her staff, but when team members would leave they would give their reason for leaving as more money or a shorter commute.

It wasn’t until Billy was out sick and Sophie stepped in to support his team that she found out that he was micromanaging his team believing that it was the only way to make sure that everything got done.

When Sophie asked for the risk assessments no one knew where they were because Billy completed them, when she asked the team to print out the sales reports again no one knew how.

Each person had something that they were responsible for but no knowledge sharing had taken place, so sharing the load or covering for sickness was generally done by Billy.

No wonder why the highly intelligent staff that Sophie hired weren’t lasting long in Billy’s team, their progress was being stifled.

It’s important that individuals within your business feel empowered to share how they are feeling and are confident that you will take action to rectify any issues, but to find out you need to take time to meet individually and …

1. Ask if they think their job is meaningful

2. Ask what could be done to improve the organisational culture

3. Ask if they feel valued at work

4. Ask if they have the equipment to enable them to do their job effectively

5. Ask about their work-life balance, and what could be done to improve it

6. Ask what they think about remote working (if it would be a viable option)

7. Ask if they would recommend a friend join your business

Now take these responses and use them to create a people plan for your business. If you need some help pulling this together, contact us to schedule a call