Reasons Your Employees Are Dashing for the Door

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RunRoughly 2.8 million American people quit their jobs  in September of 2014, according to CNNMoney. While the reasons why people quit their jobs are as varied as the reasons for why they take jobs, of few of those reasons are directly under HR’s and management’s control — and all of them can be avoided, according to Susan M. Heathfield, HR expert from About.com.  Some common reasons why employees leave their jobs include:

  • poor leadership;
  • no room for improvement;
  • lack of interest in position;
  • poor coworker relationships;
  • not being challenged enough ;
  • their skill set isn’t being properly used;
  • unfair distributions of duties;
  • lack of financial stability within the company;
  • corporate culture;
  • and lack of praise from supervisors.

The good news is that these office tragedies don’t have to haunt the building and everyone involved. Though managers are often busy with their own responsibilities, taking care of their teams  is important for high performance and employee satisfaction. Here are a few tips to prevent these problems from occurring, directly from the pros:

Management/Employee Relationships

Employees and managers don’t have to braid one another’s hair and giggle about the latest gossip in the office, but maintaining friendly relationships is healthy for the office. Bosses are a large part of their employees’ lives, so why not keep things positive?

“Both parties have different expectations that lead to a disconnected, fractured relationship,” Sandy Mazur, Spherion division president, told Business News Daily. Such fractured relationships can be avoided if employees and bosses recognize the proper parameters for their relationships with one another and interact positively with one another within those parameters.

In the event that an employee has a problem with management, that employee is unlikely to feel comfortable saying anything until it becomes a real issue. At the point when an employee does brings an issue to their employer’s attention, Mazur suggests it’s management’s duty to address the issue directly. This way, employees will know their complaints are taken seriously, and they will become more open to presenting further grievances to management, should they arise.

Is There a Bully in the Office

What does office bullying look like, and how do you know if you’re being targeted?

According to John Rossheim at Monster, a lot of office bullying is psychological. Examples range from your boss’s assistant using a rare occasion of lateness to manipulate you later, to your supervisor wrongly bashing you during a performance review, to coworkers intentionally failing to notify you about important meetings.

Kim Vosburg, director of human resources for Gene B. Glick Co., told Rossheim that awareness of office bullying is the first step for management to take. Furthermore, it’s up to the head of the HR department to notify the bully of their actions and inform them that the behavior is not welcome. Work should be a safe place for employees and employers, not a repeat of middle-school nightmares.

Proper Employee Praise

Renee, chair of the employment group at Burns & Levinson LLP, writes on The In-House Advisor  that “[i]t is important to give employees honest feedback  — whether good or bad.”

It’s not difficult to offer a quick “Thank you” for a day’s work or to take notice when a direct report has worked through a particularly thorny issue. Use tools like Yammer and public events like meetings to offer praise to employees for jobs well done. Keeping a happy, healthy office is likely to help you retain employees,  too. ZaneBenefits calculated  that having a $10/hour employee leave the office can cost an employer $3,328.

So, let’s all have healthy wallets and pleasant workforces this year by following the simple steps above!

By Noelle Murphy