Thursday, July 07, 2005
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Why employees leave organisations?
[Disclaimer: Too long .. I kept it here to read later :) ]
Every company normally faces one common problem of high employee turnout
ratio. People are leaving the company for better pay, better profile or
simply for just one reason' pak gaya '. This article might just throw some
light on the matter......
Early this year, Arun, an old friend who is a senior software designer, got
an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India
operations developing specialized software. He was thrilled by the offer. He
had heard a lot about the CEO of this company, charismatic man often quoted
in the business press for his visionary attitude.
The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place
employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, and
the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb food. Twice Arun
was sent abroad for training. "My learning curve is the sharpest it's ever
been," he said soon after he joined. "It's a real high working with such
cutting edge technology." Last week, less than eight months after he joined,
Arun walked out of the job. He has no other offer in hand but he said he
couldn't take it anymore. Nor, ap p arently, could several other people in
his department who have also quit recently. The CEO is distressed about the
high employee turnover. He's distressed about the money he's spent in
training them. He's distressed because he can't figure out what happened.
Why did this talented employee leave despite a top salary? Arun quit for the
same reason that drives many good people away.
The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup
Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000
managers and was published in a book called First Break All The Rules. It
came up with this surprising finding:
If you're losing good people, look to their immediate supervisor. More than
any other single reason, he is the reason people stay and thrive in an
organization. And he's the reason why they quit, taking their knowledge,
experience and contacts with them. Often, straight to the competition.
"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham
and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping
good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better training -
when, in the end, turnover is mostly manager issue." If you have a turnover
problem, look first to your ma n agers. Are they driving people away? Beyond
a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money, and more to
do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of this depends
directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses seem to happen to
good people everywhere.. A Fortune magazine survey some years ago found that
nearly 75 per cent of employees have suffered at the hands of difficult
superiors. You can leave one job to find - you guessed it, another wolf in a
pin-stripe suit in the next one. Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss
is possibly the worst, directly impacting the emotional health and
productivity of employees. HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees
find public humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee
may not leave, but a thought has been planted.. The second time, that
thought gets strengthened. The third time, he starts looking for another
job. When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive
aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what
they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial
information. Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get
him into trouble. You don't have your heart and soul in the job."
Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too
controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but they forget that
workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too
long, an employee will quit - often over seemingly trivial issue.
It isn't the 100th blow that knocks a good man down. It's the 99 that went
before. And while it's true that people leave jobs for all kinds of reasons-
for better opportunities or for circumstantial reasons, many who leave would
have stayed - had it not been for one man constantly telling them, as Arun's
boss did: "You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you." While it seems
like there are plenty of other fish especially in today's waters, consider
for a moment the cost of losing a talented employee.There's the cost of
finding a replacement. The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not
having someone to do the job in the meantime. The loss of client s and
contacts the person had with the industry. The loss of morale in co-workers.
The loss of trade secrets this person may now share with others. Plus, of
course, the loss of the company's reputation. Every person who leaves a
corporation then becomes its ambassador, for better or for worse. We all
know of large IT companies that people would love to join and large
television companies few want to go near. In both cases, former employees
have left to tell their tales. "Any company trying to compete must figure
out a way to engage the mind of every employee," Jack Welch of GE once said.
Much of a company's value lies "between the ears of its employees". If it's
bleeding talent, it's bleeding value. Unfortunately, many senior executives
busy travelling the world, signing new deals and developing a vision for the
company, have littl e idea of w hat may be going on at home.That deep within
an organization that otherwise does all the right things, one man could be
driving its best people away.
[Azim Premzi]
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