When employees resign, the reasons are usually obvious or maybe commonplace, such as feeling undervalued or pursuing other opportunities. However, when an employee is about to leave a company, most employers are already aware of it.
According to Robert Walters, in Asia, there is about 85% of employers claim they can already anticipate when someone on their staff is about to leave when they do an exit process survey. Usually, when an employee is thinking to leave, he or she is disengaged, distracted, less efficient, and has frequent absence.
Of course, you won’t always be able to prevent great employees from resigning, but you can do your best to avoid these problems and rather create ways to place your employees and your business, on the most ideal track for success.
With that being said, we’re here to discuss why even great employees leave your company.
1. Feeling undervalued and overworked
The truth is, we’re all just humans and we can’t always give a perfect performance. This is a reason why even amazing employees leave, thus, they feel overworked. Employees can often feel like they have too many responsibilities and they must exert effort to work behind their means to finish everything.
However, in most organizations, particularly, small businesses, you can ask your employees to wear a lot of hats. But you need to be aware of what employees have on their plate and how they’re managing their workload.
To avoid getting your employees overwhelmed, try to meet with them to talk about their work, assist them to prioritize their tasks, and motivate them to talk to you when they have an issue. This is also the same with feeling underappreciated which is another reason why employees resign. This may seem like a thing that you can brush off, but when you tell your employees that they’re doing a great job and acknowledge their work goes a long way.
2. Too many tasks or too little work
Great employees are usually capable of giving more than they are at first tasked with, which is quite a confusing problem. This level of capability can lead to the employee being requested to perform more work than they can manage, which can result in long hours and frustration at contributing more than the rest of the team, eventually giving him or her burnout.
On the other hand, employees who are capable may finish their tasks and hit roadblocks when they ask for more work, leading to boredom and inadequate fulfilment on the job which can just be as toxic as being overworked.
3. Promotion issues and no growth
A lot of employees leave their jobs when there is no growth or upward mobility. It doesn’t matter how hard they work or how well they triumph with their work if there are no chances for improvement into higher-paying, more demanding positions, then employees would choose to leave.
Meanwhile, if a less capable or qualified team member gets promoted, high-performing employees will surely look somewhere, particularly if a former teammate becomes a manager.
4. Low wages
It can be a great idea on paper to pay employees only the legal minimum, or below what they can make at other companies. Of course, paying people less will cost less money. But low pay is another reason why a lot of good employees choose to leave. This will only result in costing your business more in the long run.
Even if you think that an employee’s salary is fair, you need to be conscious of how it compares to industry standards. If your employees feel or truly believe that they’re not being paid properly for the work that they do, and they can find better pay for the same job somewhere else, then they going to want to go for that higher-paid opportunity.
5. Poor company culture
This last one is probably the most difficult cause to fix. Although there are other reasons that focus on the individual, this is usually a company-wide problem. So, if you think that company culture is only a business buzzword, well think again. It’s actually a huge contributor to how employees feel and view their jobs overall.
Employees are most likely to stay at the job and give a great output if they feel connected to your business and involved with the entirety of your operations, not only with their particular responsibilities.
This is why it’s important that HR solutions help you promote open communication in the workplace, especially among managers and employees as this will strengthen retention rates. Poor company culture consists of various range of issues such as vague company values, not enough transparency, or simply not giving your employees the right they need to perform their job.
