How Youre Making Your Employees Want to Quit

How Youre Making Your Employees Want to Quit The  jobs market is changing every  day. Digital advancement is paving the way to increased employment transparency on a number of levels; people are more informed than ever before. We can compare our situations with those of others, and we are all too privy to whether weve got it good, okay, bad or horrible. Its easy to  search for new jobs from our phones whenever and wherever we want, and many of us are also  headhunted regularly for open positions. Its difficult to ignore the alternatives  that we know are out there for us; we know we have choice and we know we arent stuck if were unhappy. LinkedIn reports  78% of employees will not tolerate a bad culture, even if it means working for  a top company. Facing it head on The  clever companies are the ones taking retention seriously and  aggressively addressing it, embracing  things like culture and development.  Many are spending time and money on things like employer  branding and employee advocacy,  creating strategies for attracting and holding onto good  talent. Great  company leaders are swallowing  that they now need to constantly  win over their top performers and nurture those with great  potential in order to stop them leaving. Disgruntled employees know they shouldnt  have to deal with unrealistic working hours, stressful manager antics and poor working conditions, and in the face of workplace adversity, will likely up and leave for some greener grass on another side. Where do you come in? An employees relationship with their manager is possibly the most crucial  deciding factor in their day-to-day happiness at work. The saying goes that people quit managers, not their jobs. Being a manager of people is a privilege and a huge responsibility  getting it wrong can mean good employees will leave  not just your team, but your company.  It might not matter how much the salary is, how generous the benefits package is, how many friends a person has at work or the actual  daily tasks they get involved with if an employees manager drives them up the wall, theyll move on. While some managers are nasty by nature, many just misjudge  the amount of pressure and expectation to apply to get the best performance. Are you guilty of the below? These are the things that will make your employees want to leave. Talking up  workaholics When a manager sings the praise of a workaholic,  and condones work-obsessed behaviours, employees will start to feel like they are inadequate. Managers who glorify behaviours like staying really late everyday, skipping lunch breaks for meetings and working on weekends  will make hardworking employees feel their input is not great enough to get them noticed for the right reasons.  A good manager will foster  dedication and commitment within  their employees by making sure their well beings are being looked after first. A healthy, happy employee will give more to their work than a stressed out person who is constantly stretched and tired. Unwritten no-sick policies When we are sick, it is really hard to think clearly about anything else other than that fact. We spend our days sniffling, coughing, holding our stomachs; basically just trying to get through each hour without collapsing. Being productive is a really huge ask. Managers who make their employees feel like they dont have the option of staying home, working from home or going home early when they are unwell will  quickly become resented. Many employees feel guilty about using sick leave, and push themselves to the brink of breakdown. When stress couples itself with being unwell, a candidate will likely hit breaking point and  take multiple days off in a row  to recover.  In that time, theyll fester on everything they loathe about working, and the seed of  wanting to leave will have been  planted. Using motivational jargon like dig deep in times of real concern Work can be stressful  at times; this is fairly unavoidable. An employee wont necessarily leave a company because things get stressful, but they will if their manager doesnt deal with the situation effectively and look after their best interests.  When workplace stress leads to cracks forming in an employees demeanour, a manger should be quick to offer support and an open door for discussion and debriefing. Managers who ignore the warning signs of a seriously stressed out employee, and instead use motivational managerial jargon like dig deep will leave employees feeling helpless, and the pressure that comes with the implication of suck it up and deal with it will push them even closer tojust upping and leaving. Mouthing off more senior management Managers have managers too, and  feel boss-related frustrations just like their own  team does with them. Managers should never mouth off the senior layer above them, even if their own team shares the same  feelings. Managers  might feel like banding together with their team in mutual  annoyance towards bigger bosses in the company will embrace a sense of togetherness and get members of their team on side in a friend-like way. However, all this does is make individual employees doubt the leaders in the company, and highlight how shaky employer relations in their company really are. Managers shouldnt bring this kind of venting and negativity to their own staff. Image: Shutterstock