7 Common Reasons for Losing Your Best Talent

Sometimes, you can’t do anything about someone leaving your company. But you might as well learn from these 7 common mistakes that drive the best talent out of your door faster than you can say “Talent”!

Losing a great employee is an awful thing. First, there’s the expense of finding, onboarding, and training a replacement. There’s uncertainty about what sort of new employee will work out. On top of that, we should also consider the increased workload of other employees in filling the open positions.

Sometimes, there’s a good reason. Maybe the person was a bad fit for the team or moved away for personal reasons. On the other hand, they may have been offered an opportunity too great to pass up. Even if it’s a difficult changeover, it feels fundamentally right in those situations.

But how about the rest of the time?

Keeping your best talent starts with understanding why people leave. Listed below are seven of the most common reasons:

1. Stagnation

People don’t want to believe they’re locked into a groove and will come to the same place and do a similar thing every day for another 20 or 40 years. People want to feel that they’re still continuing to grow in their professional lives. They know they’ll need to get it somewhere else if there’s no career ladder or structure for advancement. So, for the time being, they’re much more likely to be bored, unhappy, and resentful – things that affect performance and the whole team’s morale.

2. Being Overworked

Some intervals of being stressed and feeling overwhelmed come with most careers, but nothing repels great employees faster than being overworked. Frequently, it is the best employees, the most able and dedicated, and your most trusted whom you overload the most. If they end up constantly dealing with more workload, perhaps without recognition, they come to feel they’re being used. Who could blame them? You’d feel the same.

3. Vague Visions

There is nothing more frustrating than a workplace filled with visions and big dreams but no translation of those aspirations into the strategic goals that make them achievable. Without that connection, it’s all just chat. Which talented person desires to spend his / her hard work supporting something undefined? People like to know that they are attempting to create something, not merely spinning their wheels.

4. Revenue Over People

When a business values its bottom line more than its people, the best talent goes elsewhere. They leave behind those who are too mediocre or apathetic to find a better position. The result is a culture of underperformance, low morale, and even disciplinary issues. Obviously, things like revenue, output, pleasing stakeholders, and productivity are important, but success eventually depends on the individuals who do the task.

5. Insufficient Recognition

Even the most selfless people desire to be known and rewarded for well-done work. It really is part of who we are as human beings. When you neglect to recognize employees, you are failing to motivate them and missing out on the simplest way to bolster great performance. Even if you don’t possess the money to provide raises or bonus deals, there are several low-cost ways to provide recognition. Compliments are free!

6. Insufficient Trust

Your employees have a vantage point for looking at your behavior and weighing it against your commitments. If indeed they see you coping unethically with suppliers, lying to stakeholders, cheating clients, or failing woefully to keep your word, the best and most principled of talents will leave. Even worse, the others will stay behind and follow your lead.

7. Excessive Hierarchy

Every workplace needs structure and management, but a rigidly top-down organization creates unhappy employees. Things that can affect employees’ morale in this regard are as follows:

• If your very best performers know that they’re expected to produce without adding their ideas
• If They feel that they’re not empowered to make decisions
• If they constantly have to defer to others based on their name rather than their experience

In such a scenario, they don’t have much to be happy about!

Eventually, many people who leave their jobs do this because of the boss, not the work or the business. Consider what you may be doing to drive your very best people away and begin making the changes you need to retain them.