Top 7 Reasons Why Employees Leave their Jobs

Everything in the business environment that we function has changed. Employees are remaining at their jobs for far less time than even five years ago, averaging about 3 years. Three years is hardly enough time for an employee to settle in and make meaningful contribution to organizational performance. Management is hard pressed to keep key high performing employees. The organization meanwhile has to shoulder the financial burden of what amounts to a revolving door of recruitment and separation.

If you are struggling with hanging on to your good employees (attrition rates more than 30%), don't just assume you know why your good employees are leaving. No. Not even if you have exit interviews. A quick survey of the remaining employees will tell you where to focus your energies and resources that will best improve your retention rate.

Here are the top seven reasons that organizations such as yours, are losing good employees. Which ones do you think apply to your organization?

Difficult/dysfunctional boss relationship
The majority of workers would say that they have at best an Ok working relationship with their bosses. Most say "I try not to take it personal. Its just a job". A good number of employees quit their jobs because they can't work with their bosses. It is usually a result of personality clashes, the boss' poor leadership style, downright bad management, or a stressful organizational culture, or all of the above.

Stressful organizational culture
A stressful culture is bad for the employee's physical and mental health. Continuous pressure from long hours, inadequate resources, heavy workloads, unrealistic performance expectations, a telling and controlling style of management, an aggressive or passive aggressive environment, lack of appreciation, and political maneuvering, lead to stressful organizational culture. Though these elements will be present at any time in almost every organization, a combination a few elements or severity of any of these elements will drive good employees towards the door. What to do? Culture change, of course.

Lack of meaning in their work
This has become even more important to most people in the wake of 9/11. People want to feel that they are contributing to some higher collective. They are looking to be challenged by the work they do, for a sense of community and belongingness, to know that leadership cares about the organization and that the organization cares about them. If they don't get it at your organization, they'll look for it elsewhere.

Lack of promotion or advancement opportunities
After few years, employees figure out the ins and outs of their position and most start to get bored. In addition most people want promotion or advancement opportunities as testament to the good work they put in, the contributions they have made and the knowledge and experience they have gained from the job. Cynicism soon sets in when employees feel like they have a dead end job. If this continues, the employee may leave at the first opportunity or "retire on the job".

Pay inequity or not enough pay
This is a matter of fairness and worth. The issue here is pay equity (internal and external) as well as external competitiveness. People are more concerned about pay equity than they are with how much money they are getting paid. However, employees will leave if they get substantially more money or benefits elsewhere than they get at their current jobs. So do an internal study and take a look at how much others are paying for similar roles through a compensation study.

Poor leadership
When employees feel that the leadership is incompetent, they will look for other opportunities where they feel there is leadership that can build thriving organizations. Most people are not blessed to be intuitive leaders. Most people in formal leadership positions sort of feel their way around their leadership responsibilities to the chagrin of their followers. Many organizations do not provide for formal training to help leaders learn to lead effectively. For this reason, organizations must make provisions for purposeful development of the leadership capacity of existing and potential leaders.

Management is indecisive
Management must be decisive in doing what needs to get done. Making the tough decisions is a management responsibility. Management must orchestrate timely and accurate data for effective decision-making. Management must appear sure of itself, be direct about focus, and management must execute plans/decisions promptly. Management is not paid to be indecisive. When employees need direction and feel they wont get it, chaos abounds. When this happens, apathy sets in and employees who can will leave at the very first opportunity.

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