Employee Attrition and Retention – Part 1

Introduction
This is the 1st blog in the series in which we are going to discuss the attrition in an organization. An organization is built with teams and the team’s growth is dependent on each employee, but when an employee quits the job, it can disturb a team’s dynamics. Other team members may find themselves scrambled to cover the extra work for weeks, or even for months until a new candidate gets hired. Hence, it becomes important for any organization to work towards retaining the key employees.

Reasons Employees Want to Leave Their Jobs
Here are some very common reasons that make an employee leave the job based on certain statistics we have collated the best information from various survey & studies to give you a clear picture of where an organization can go wrong and what causes employees to resign.

~ The job wasn’t what they’d expected
~ Lack of coaching or feedback
~ They didn’t get along with the boss
~ Lack of opportunity for career advancement
~ They didn’t feel supported or appreciated
~ They weren’t getting paid enough

The job wasn’t what they’d expected
Research Says 86 Percent of Employees Quit Within the First Six Months, and the primary reason for that is immediate supervisor does not mentor a new employee. If the hiring manager unable to communicate frequently with the new employee about their roles and responsibility that during the first few months, an employee will get disengaged.

The other core reason behind this is either they were misled by hiring managers or candidate did not understand the expectation of the job – like when an employer suddenly switches your boss on you. Leigh Branham calls it in his book: The 7 Hidden Reasons Employee Leave: How to Recognize the Subtle and Act Before It’s Too Late.

Lack of coaching or feedback
Every employee often wants to know about how they are doing and there is no surprise in this. What is their expertise? What are the areas of improvement? What they need to do to grow in the organization?

If they get little or no feedback at work Seven out of ten workers in United States, are reported feeling actively disengaged. On the other side, the company who often provide feedback have a lower attrition ratio than the organization that doesn’t.

They didn’t get along with the boss
One of the main reasons for employee attrition is that employees are leaving their Managers precisely and not the job. A poll of more than 1 million employed U.S workers surveyed by Gallup stated that the most common reason for people quitting their jobs is the immediate manager. 75% of workers who left jobs did so because of their bosses and no the position.

There are innumerable situations when an employee must have faced trouble working along with their immediate boss. Maybe they are not comfortable coming up with questions or concerns, or maybe their supervisor won’t discuss their issues.

Whatsoever the reason, the key point is that there is has to be a connection between the Manager and employee. It is the managers duty to make the atmosphere comfortable for them and discuss their goals. Some 54% of US workers are reported they felt most comfortable approaching their manager for their queries and concerns, and they are actively engaged at work. The ration quickly falls to 24% for those who gave the highest rating.

In another study of 7,712 U.S. adults, by Gallup respondents were asked to rate their manager on specific behaviors related to communication, performance management, and strengths. The final result stated that the ratings on these behaviors “strongly link to employee engagement and give organizations better insights into developing their managers and raising the overall level of performance of the business.”

Lack of opportunity for career advancement
In a write-up, Inc. mentioned that 32% of employees might have left the job due to career advancement and promotional opportunities.

Most of us would agree to keep our most efficient and top performing employees in the same role for a longer time, but let’s be realistic here, this will not be acceptable by the employee. If, as an organization we cannot provide them with opportunities that will help them to grow, then when they find a company that is ready to provide them with this growth and new opportunities, they will surely quit. Everyone is looking for a job that will provide them with growth and better rewards.

Similarly, when an employee holding a higher level of education is not valued he will definitely look for opportunities. So, the higher the level of education an employee has, the more chances are there they’ll seek additional assignments that will challenge them to grow.

They didn’t feel supported or appreciated
Everyone would like to get appreciated. Feeling recognized at the workplace can be the hardest thing for a company to measure of its employee, but it’s also a most significant thing to gauge. A Whopping 66% of employees report that they do feel not appreciated at work.

How would you feel if not valued? It could be as simple as not being recognized for the job done well. It could be as obvious as being handled disrespectfully or being asked to work in the miserable environment. It could also be other reasons, more behind the scene, like unequal pay grade, job responsibility etc.

They weren’t getting paid enough
Surprised!! You must be kidding yourself. It is one of the most prominent ways to make your employee feel that you care about them, by offering competitive wages.

In a survey done by Gallup it said that, “highly engaged employees ratio is 43%, who are more likely to perceive that they are compensated as per their ability to work, compared to little or highly disengaged employees 15% and 13% respectively.

Conclusion
It is not easy for the Human Resource person to retain every employee that plans to leave, but to work on them to reduce the attrition rate is what become important for them. 9series is a popular mobile app development company and believes in employee satisfaction. They carry out a lot of activities for employee engagement and retention which will be discussed in the next blog.  In this blog we have discussed some of the reasons for employees quitting their jobs, in the next part of the blog we will discuss about various factors and ideas that will help to keep employees more engaged by overcoming these scenarios.

Stay Tuned to read the next blog in the series!. We will be back with Part II soon!