How to Lose an Employee in 10 Ways
POSTED ON
May 9, 2018
While spending a lovely night in with popcorn and Netflix, I happened upon How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This was my favorite movie as a teen and I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it – too many to count! I realized how many parallels the movie had to my work with Brilliant Ink.
This movie teaches you that people are not expendable. A high performing employee is worth a lot these days. Hiring and training a new employee costs more than maintaining a current employee. Any good boss or HR team worth their salt knows this to be true.
Andie Anderson and Benjamin Berry were dealt the ultimate cosmic whammy in the movie. While real life is not a movie, there are some valuable lessons that can be learned from these two love birds.
These are the ten ways you can lose an employee – maybe not in ten days, but you get the point.
Don’t bother with training
Onboarding and training play a very large part in an employee’s experience. These are the first impressions your employee has of their day-to-day life, so make them count. It can make or break how productive and how long your employees stick around.
Focus on the negative
A manager who only focuses on the negative will end up driving employees away. Nobody's perfect and there is always room for improvement. It’s important to recognize the positive while finding teachable moments from the negative.
Hire outsiders
Hiring and promoting from within gives employees a goal and something to strive towards. You’ll save time and money by promoting in-house. It gives employees a sense of security to see people who have been with the company for years.
No recognition
If you don’t reward or recognize a job well done, employees will notice and feel undervalued and unappreciated. This will inevitably lead them to look for other employment. Your employees will feel more valued and appreciated if you recognize them publicly at the team meeting.
Lack of career path
Research by Catalyst cites employees’ “perception of limited opportunities” as a top reason for an employee leaving a company. Make sure employees have something to work towards and plenty of opportunity for growth.
Downplay values and mission
Finding the right employee can take hours, weeks, or months of time and effort. You’ve already worked hard to find the perfect fit – so don’t lose sight of your values and morals now. This is where company culture comes into play.
Measure hours, not results
Don’t focus solely on the bottom line at the expense of your employees’ happiness. Employees need to feel appreciated, valued, and needed in order to feel satisfied at work. Keep productivity in mind while also remembering that your employees matter too.
Ignore feedback
Your employees have valuable insight and opinions regarding your business and company needs. Make sure you ask for feedback and actually use it to improve. You can use simple anonymous surveys to gauge how your employees’ feel.
Set the bar low
Usually employees start their jobs with ambition and energy and either get burned out or aren’t challenged enough. Make sure your employees are comfortable enough and have the opportunity to ask for more work or responsibility and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Burn them out
On the flip side, employees can feel overworked and under appreciated. You don’t want to give your employees so much work that they can’t handle it and resent the company or their peers and superiors. Make sure that if someone asks for help, they won’t be singled out or punished for not being able to handle their tasks independently.
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