Why do your employees leave and how can you encourage them to stay?
Reasons they might leave…
- They want a higher salary
- They need more opportunities for progression
- They feel undervalued and unappreciated
- They want a career change
- They dislike the work atmosphere/ environment
- They have a poor work / life balance
These are some of the most common reasons why an employee decides to leave a job. More often than not, employees are reluctant to say the real reason for leaving a job if it is negative in case it affects their reference. So, how do you know if these are the reasons why your staff are leaving? How do you improve this? See below for some tips!
Salary
Many people feel uncomfortable discussing their salary and pay rises, so clarifying the salary at the start can help. Make sure the employee is happy with their salary and state the likelihood of a review for a raise and when that might be as well as the criteria for reaching this.
Opportunities
Find out what sort of opportunities they are looking for and how they would like to progress. Is this something you could help with? Are there training days that could help them and if not, can you implement some? Do you have any networking events the company attends that they could join?
Feeling undervalued
Ensure that you listen to your employees. You could have monthly meetings where employees can voice their opinions to get an idea of how they’re feeling and if any changes should be made. Reward and/ or give recognition for good work in the workplace. Ways of doing this could be things such as writing well done messages, having achievements on display, bonuses or even providing some refreshments.
The atmosphere/ environment
Make sure the work environment is comfortable by ensuring your employees have a clean workspace that does not feel cramped. Take the time to get to know your employees so that they know you care about their well being, this will make them feel more at ease. Often employees can feel overwhelmed and this creates a negative atmosphere in the workplace. Ensure you set rules in the workplace but do not pressure your staff or overwhelm them with an unfair and unrealistic workload. This will only cause them to feel stressed out and if others feel the same, it will be an unproductive and unhappy environment which may make the employees leave.
Work/ Life Balance
Being able to separate work life from home life is important to many employees. This depends on the job however, ensuring your employees have a break so that they feel refreshed and prepared for work each week has many benefits. Ways that the work/ life balance can be maintained are…
- Giving your employees a good amount of holiday
- Avoid spamming the work group chat on the weekends
- Give an appropriate workload – don’t give them an unrealistic workload with unrealistic timeframes where they’ll be dreading coming into work after the weekend
- Having flexible work patterns – consider being open and empathetic to your employees situations if they need to leave work for a specific reason. Perhaps allow it so long as the hours missed are made up for
