Monday morning. The delicious aroma of your first cup of coffee greets you. You open your laptop. Then you hear a soft knock on your open door. You look up and there he is. Your best team member. Your superstar. You hired him 5 months ago. “Do you have a minute?” he asks with a serious look on his face. Half an hour later, completely in shock, you take a sip of your now cold coffee. You don’t understand. How did you not see this coming?  

Every manager has had to deal with it: employees that quit. It’s part of the job. It’s actually good for a company when people leave. It makes room for new people. Fresh ideas, innovation, and different points of view. But what if your top employees leave one after the other? Or if employees that started 6 months ago already leave? That’s a different story.

Why do employees quit?

There are very few employees who just up and leave from one day to the next. Days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years precede. This means that your company also has days, weeks, months and sometimes even years to prevent this. So why is it that retaining good employees is so difficult?

More than 10 years of experience within small and large organisations has shown that there are a lot of different reasons:

Poor leadership

“People don’t leave a bad job. They leave bad leaders.” We hear this frequently. And it’s true. Good leaders are able to make their people grow, to help them bring out the best in themselves. Poor leaders, on the other hand, manage to turn motivated, hardworking employees into pale, uninspired robots that count down the minutes until they can go home and that use their lunch breaks to scroll through vacancies for a better alternative. 

Research done by LinkedIn showed that 41% of people named poor management as a reason for accepting another job.

Management is not about being there for a couple of important moments. You just aren’t going to cut it with a performance interview, an appraisal interview and an end-of-year bonus. Employees aren’t machines. Invest time in them. Get to know them. Know what motivates them. Good leadership can make or break the retention of valuable employees.

There is no challenge

Do you know what keeps your employees inspired? What challenges them? This is definitely not the same for everyone. As surprising as it may sound, not every team member is looking for a promotion. Not everyone dreams of being in a leadership role themselves. And that’s ok. It’s important that every employee gets the chance to develop in his/her own way. Whether that’s through a promotion or a new challenge within the current position. A good Learning & Development programma is essential for this. 

There is not a good onboarding programme

Did you know that 20% of employees leave the company within 45 days? And that no less than 1 out of 3 people leaves within the first year?

A high turnover rate is incredibly expensive. Replacing an employee costs 50-150% of an annual salary. Additionally, the constant change of employees causes demotivation among the remaining team members. Because how do you form a good team if there’s constantly new faces?

A programme for new employees (also called an onboarding programme) makes the difference. And no, this isn’t about “you can get your coffee here and here’s the printer.” An onboarding programme ensures that a successful candidate turns into a successful employee within 90 days by showing them the culture of the organisation and by offering them a future perspective. By setting goals, clarifying expectations and creating a personal development plan.

Investing in a good onboarding programme reduces staff turnover by as much as 54%.

What do you think? Shall we have a cup of coffee together to talk about your staff retention? I promise you your coffee won’t get cold!