Why do they keep leaving?

How many times have you thought to yourself that you work at a great company? You offer good benefits, a nice work environment, you don’t push your employees to the brink of exhaustion, but you still keep losing employees. If benefits alone were the magic bullet, every company would spare no expense… and some actually spend a ton on benefits. Large companies that can afford the perks and niceties many times enjoy lower turnover, but that might just be for different reasons. Some employees work for large companies for the name cache on their resumes. Others do love the benefits and opportunities for growth. Paying higher salaries may seem like the right answer, but we’ve all heard that pay is not a motivator. So if it’s not pay or benefits, and we can’t all run companies with the deep pockets of a large multinational, how do we attract and keep our employees?

One word…leadership. Great leadership is what attracts employees and poor leadership is why they leave.

Often times, companies are prepared to spend money on training and development for employees, and many take advantage of it. They recognize the value of bolstering their skills and developing new talents, if for no other reason than to make themselves more marketable, internally or externally. However, if you were to ask employees whether they would prefer to go to training or the money should be spent sending their boss to training…I wonder how many would choose the latter. If more managers were trained to be better leaders, companies would surely enjoy happier employees, lower turnover, and as a result, higher margins.

Providing great pay and benefits in a poorly managed situation is tantamount to torture for an employee. They may feel stuck and can’t leave…but don’t let that fool you. They have already left; they just haven’t told you.

By John P. Savas