The cost of employee turnover is too high. You expend too much in recruiting, advertising, and training let alone the lost productivity, increased stress, and low morale that comes with frequent turnover. And triple all this if a person has been a valuable asset to your company. You simply can’t afford to lose a high contributor.
Why Would a Quality Employee Leave?
Some of the reasons—a better offer, a new career opportunity, family issues. or personal problems are beyond your sphere of influence. Most situations, however, are well within your control.
According to studies, management is one of the top reasons quality employees leave. If they are working for a boss who does not respect their worth or treat them well, they will look elsewhere for employment.
10 Negative Behaviors That Make for a Bad Boss
1. Micromanages or has a bureaucratic management style. Quality employees need very little supervision. They enjoy responsibility and desire to rise to the challenges given to them. If their leader, however, micromanages, then quality employees feel as if they are neither trusted nor respected. “Let me know if you need help,” is a better way.
2. Is insincere. A leader who merely gives lip service will lose the trust of quality employees who are looking for their leaders to be open, honest, and follow through on commitments.
3. Does not set an example for others to follow. If a leader insists on employees treating customers well, then that same leader better treat his/her workers well.
4. Is incompetent. Nothing can frustrate quality employees more than a leader who is inept. If a leader has poor leadership and communication skills, or the leader has only average skills for the job, quality employees simply don’t want to work for them. They want to work for someone they respect, admire, and learn from. They also need to be competent in managing people.
5. Brushes people off or is inaccessible. Whether a manager intentionally ignores employees’ concerns or is truly too busy, the message is the same: the leader doesn’t care enough about people to give them the attention and respect they deserve.
6. Tolerates underperformers. Quality employees lose respect for leaders who do not address performance issues with problem coworkers. Because good employees care about the company, they will pick up the slack for those not pulling their load…but they won’t be happy about it. If a leader thinks he/she can avoid dealing with the weak employee because the work is getting done, they are setting themselves up for worse problems down the road. When the situation is not addressed, it’s not the underperformer who will leave, but the top performer.
7. Is unappreciative. Quality employees want to hear “Thank you.” “I appreciate what you are doing for me and the company.” It is the least the manager can do for a good employee, especially on a job- site.
8. Does not equally distribute workload. Leaders have a tendency to “punish employees for good performance.” In other words, if quality employees do an excellent job in one area, suddenly they find themselves spreading out to other areas. Before long, they are doing far more work than their colleagues. Eventually, they suffer from burnout and decide to move on.
9. Does not resolve conflicts. Conflicts occur in most companies. A good leader, however, is proactive in heading off problems, or, at least, will quickly resolve conflicts, regardless of the nature of the issues.
10. Delegates an important task to someone on their staff, takes the credit. Quality employees will become disheartened if their boss does not give credit to their team, or any individual on their team.
If you think these situations do not exist in many companies do the research yourself. You’d be surprised at what you will find.
The question to ask yourself each day — Would you want to work for YOU?
About Christine Corelli
