Why Do Great Employees Leave?

In employee exit interviews people are asked, “Why are you leaving?”  The answers are usually fairly predictable.  People tend to say they are leaving to pursue a better opportunity, to make more money or to explore a dream.  Although many of these are probably true they are symptoms and not necessarily the cause.

Some studies indicate that more than 70% of people leave their managers, not the company.  People leave people, not necessarily companies.  Most people will not say this in an exit interview because frankly it would not be very smart and most people need and want to leave on good terms. 

The issue is, how do you prevent this from happening in the first place because turnover is very costly (from 30% to 400% of the yearly salary depending on the seniority) and as a manager you probably do not want people leaving you.

Managing people is not easy and more than 90% of being a great manager of people involves developing excellent people skills.  Companies and universities tend to train on technical skills and not enough energy and budget is invested in learning soft skills and how to work with people.  Some studies show that 87% of the problems in companies are people related and only 7% of training budgets are spent on people skills.

Make sure to invest in your managers and try programs that create habits and not just teach skills.  Your managers and employees will love you for this and so will the bottom line.  The only loser here will be the competition because they will not be getting your best people.

C3 - Corporate Culture Consulting