The cost of losing good workers is rising: when you factor in finding, onboarding, and training a replacement—plus the unavoidable “holding your breath” phase while you hope they work out in those first few months—companies simply cannot afford to push top talent out the door. There are many reasons why people quit their jobs—is your organization guilty of pushing people out? 

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them
 as a whole person—not just an employee—are more productive,
 more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied 
customers, which leads to profitability.” 
- Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox

Retention statistics that will make you pay attention

ERE Media compiled some alarming statistics that don’t exactly paint a pretty picture about the state of employee retention.

• 73% of organizations revamp their onboarding to improve their employee retention.
• One third of new hires quit their job after about six (6) months
• Referred employees have a 45% retention rate after two years.
• Nearly four out of five (78%) of business leaders rank employee retention as important or urgent.
• Remote workers are 50% less likely to quit
• One third (33%) of employees knew whether they would stay with their company long-term after their first week.
• Some 35% of employees will start looking for a job if they don’t receive a pay raise in the next 12 months.
• One third (33%) of leaders at companies with 100 plus employees are currently looking for jobs.
• 32% of employers say they expect employees to job-hop.

Here are the top reasons why people quit their jobs.

Lack of growth

“People don't want to think they're locked into a groove and will come to the same place and do the same thing every day for the next 20 or 40 years.”

There’s a lack of organizational trust

‘People crave transparency, openness, and honesty from their leaders—unfortunately, business leaders continue to face issues of trust.’ There’s a reason why it’s important to trust your intuition—because usually that little ethical meter inside knows what’s going on. If there’s a string of miscommunication from top to bottom, or even unethical behaviour with vendors, dealing with stakeholders or failing to stay true with clients—these issues will continue to build and are a good way of kicking quality team members out the door.

A failure to invest in the workforce

“What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us? What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”

Everyone has heard this famous saying, but there’s something to be said about employee development programs—or lack thereof. Leadership won’t get much of a return of investment if they fail to provide resources for personal and professional development.

Being overworked of feeling a lack of recognition  

‘Overworking good employees is perplexing; it makes them feel as if they’re being punished for great performance.’ We’ve become obsessed with the numbers of hours worked instead of focusing on the amount of value delivered—there’s a big difference. On the flipside, a major driver of top talent out the door is the lack of recognition for good work. It’s important for managers to communicate a job well done to their team—it can go a long way. 

No clear company vision

As an individual, have a clear set of values and goals serve as your beacon in life that pulls you towards your vision. Without this, one risks floating through life aimlessly, accepting whatever comes their way. Feeling connected to the organization’s goals is one way to keep employees mentally and emotionally tied to a company. The way they attract and retain talent is by having a concise mission statement and concrete quarterly and yearly goals to work towards. There has to be company-wide trust with everyone bought into the program—otherwise you risk the top players testing the free agency waters.

There’s no room for creativity 

People by and large seek to constantly improve themselves. And monotonous tasks can wear the creative edge off, especially if you feel your aren’t contributing on a creative and original level. This new workforce wants to be able to have the ability to work from wherever, whenever with the responsibility to infuse their creative insight into projects.

They want more money

People who stay with a company and build long-term growth and success typically make the most money in the long run because they’ve given themselves time to develop instead of job-hopping and nickel and dime-ing how much adds to their salary. Understanding your worth, and being well compensated for the value you contribute to a company is important with your overall harmony of life – but it shouldn’t necessarily serve as the be-all-end-all of decisions to quickly jump ship.

Bad blood with their boss   

Dr. Travis Bradberry once said, “people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.” There might be a cumulative effect on what pushes good employees out the door, but if there isn’t a good working relationship with the higher ups, there will always be a sort of disconnect.