Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Top Ten Reasons Why People Quit Their Jobs

By: Gregory P. Smith, author of Here Today Here Tomorrow: Transforming Your Workforce from High-Turnover to High-Retention

There are many reasons why good employees quit, most are preventable. From my years of experience as a consultant, I’ve identified a “Top Ten” list of reasons why people leave jobs:

1. Management demands that one person do the jobs of two or more people, resulting in longer days and weekend work.

2. Management cuts back on administrative help, forcing professional workers to use their time copying, stapling, collating, filing and other clerical duties.

3. Management puts a freeze on raises and promotions, when an employee can easily find a job earning 20-30 percent more somewhere else.

4. Management doesn’t allow the rank and file to make decisions or allow them pride of ownership. A visitor to my website E-mailed me a message that said, “Forget about the “professional” decisions—how about when you can’t even select the company’s holiday card without the President rejecting it for one of his own taste?”

5. Management constantly reorganizes, shuffles people around, and changes direction constantly.

6. Management doesn’t have or take the time to clarify goals and decisions. Therefore, it rejects work after it was completed, damaging the morale and esteem of those who prepared it.

7. Management shows favoritism and gives some workers better offices, trips to conferences, etc.

8. Management relocates the offices to another location, forcing employees to quit or double their commute.

9. Management promotes someone who lacks training and/or necessary experience to supervisor, alienating staff and driving away good employees.

10. Management creates a rigid structure and then allows departments to compete against each other while at the same time preaching teamwork and cooperation.

Interesting, isn’t it — that all ten factors begin with the phrase “Management….” Interesting, too, just how many of these high-turnover factors are preventable? My retention survey confirmed the truth of the saying, “Employees don’t quit their companies, they quit their bosses.” Thirty five percent of the respondents answered yes to the question, Was the attitude of your direct supervisor/manager the primary factor in your quitting a previous job?

Soft management skills—people skills—are the critical element in battling high turnover and creating a high-retention workforce or what I call, “retentionship.”

About the Author
Greg Smith is the “Retention Expert.” He shows executives and business owners how to attract and keep customers and build organizations that retain and motivate its workforce. He is the author of the book, Here Today Here Tomorrow: Transforming Your Workforce from High-Turnover to High-Retention.

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How to retain quality employees

By: Roger Herman, CSP, CMC author, Keeping Good People

Every time you lose a valued employee, you’re losing money right off your bottom line. It makes sense to stabilize your workforce as much as you can, so you can generate a stronger profit.

Human resources? Bottom line? Yes, they are connected. When you have to replace an employee, it can be costly. First of all, you may have to pay overtime or hire temporary workers to fill the void. Production becomes more expensive, if you can even keep up with what has to be done. Falling behind costs money . . . and may cost you a customer.

Recruiting, selecting, and hiring a new employee takes time and money . . . neither of which you have a lot of. Then, when you do find somebody that you hope will work out, you have to invest in training time and some team building to move that new employee into a position of productivity. Meanwhile, the business keeps moving. There’s no way to push a “pause” button while you adjust.

Benefits of Stability
Most of the benefits of workforce stability are obvious. Let’s explore a few others.

When you have a stable workforce–few, if any, people leaving unexpectedly–you also enjoy a good morale. People know each other, they’re comfortable with each other, they work well together. This kind of relationship can be powerful when there’s a rush order to get out or when there’s a problem somewhere in the manufacturing process. People are more likely to pitch in and help each other when they know each other and believe in mutual support.

Read the rest of the article at Logoworks.

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The Art of Recruiting

By: Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures and Author

The art of recruiting is the purest form of evangelism because you’re not simply asking people to try your product, buy your product, or partner with you. Instead, you are asking them to bet their lives on your organization. Can it get any scarier for them, and tougher for you, than this?

1. Hire better than yourself. In the Macintosh Division, we had a saying, “A player hire A players; B players hire C players”–meaning that great people hire great people. On the other hand, mediocre people hire candidates who are not as good as they are, so they can feel superior to them. (If you start down this slippery slope, you’ll soon end up with Z players; this is called The Bozo Explosion. It is followed by The Layoff.) I have come to believe that we were wrong–A players hire A+ players, not merely A players. It takes self-confidence and self-awarness, but it’s the only way to build a great team.

2. Hire infected people. Classically, organizations look for the “right” educational and professional backgrounds. I would add a third quality: Is the candidate infected with a love of your product? Because all the education and work experience in the world doesn’t matter if the candidate doesn’t “get it” and love it. On the other hand, an ex-jewelry schlepper like me can make it in technology if you’re infected with a love of the product.

3. Ignore the irrelevant. This is somewhat redundant with the prior point, but it merits repetition. Often a candidate’s educational and work experience is relevant on paper but irrelevant in the real world. Would a senior vice-president from Microsoft with a PhD in computer science be an ideal employee of a startup? Not necessarily–this poor guy has been working for a company with $60 billion in cash and 95% market share, and he woke up every day not worried about the competition or customers but the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. The flip side is also true: the candidate–using a jewelry analogy– without the “perfect” background could be the diamond in the rough.

Read the rest of the article at Logoworks.

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