Turnover hurts. It hurts the morale around your company, it hurts your bottom line and it hurts your HR department. High turnover rates can infect your staff’s happiness at work as the more people that leave, the more their co-workers must do to cover the workload. Turnover is also expensive, costly roughly $4,000 to traditionally hire a new employee. And lastly, your HR department suffers because they’re spending all their time hiring and training new employees instead of focusing on big picture items that could potentially help the company meet its goals and mission. It isn’t a big mystery as to why employees leave; they leave because they’re unhappy with their current position. Fortunately, any company can both identify and prevent many of the top reasons employees leave.

  1. They feel stuck in their current position. No one likes to feel like they don’t have room to grow. According to a Workplace Happiness Survey by CNBC and Survey Monkey, 34% of surveyed workers seriously considered quitting because of a lack of career opportunities. What’s more, even satisfied employees want opportunities to develop new skills or take on new responsibilities and about 24% of young workers, those 18-24, say having opportunities to advance is the most important factor in overall happiness at work.
  2. They don’t feel they’re being paid enough. While money may not be the only factor that drives employees, it certainly is an important one. Twenty-five percent of workers who’ve considered quitting say pay is what matters most to their happiness at work. Compensating employees for a job well done shows them that you value their contribution to your company.
  3. They feel trapped in their daily schedule. Employees are demanding flexibility in their schedules as some are more productive in the morning, others are night owls. And then there are the employees trying to balance their work and home lives. When employees feel like they don’t have the flexibility to work, they start looking elsewhere.
  4. They don’t like their manager. It’s been said, employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers. According to Robert Half, bad bosses are the reason half of employees quit their jobs. A manager who doesn’t communicate, listen or provide feedback isn’t doing his or her job.
  5. Their work tools aren’t up to snuff. It’s difficult to be productive and meet company expectations when the tools and technology employees are required to use are clunky and outdated. According to the CNBC/Survey Monkey data, 49% of employees have considered quitting because their company isn’t spending enough on new technology.

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What you can do: Conduct regular performance reviews and frequent touchpoints to find out what your employees’ career aspirations are and set goals together to achieve them. Use a learning management system to upload and deliver training on-demand while providing other opportunities for development like attending webinars, conferences and providing mentorship opportunities.

What you can do: Set up a compensation management system so once your employees reach a goal, they are automatically rewarded for their efforts. For companies that are watching every dime, compensation doesn’t always have to equal dollars. Compensation can include extra PTO and even profit sharing.

What you can do: Give employees the ability to make their own schedule, offer work-from-home options to cut down on commute times and get on the same page about the number of hours they really have to work.

What you can do: Advise managers to offer regular performance reviews with employees, including providing 360-degree feedback from others at the company, including co-workers and even the CEO, to eliminate any potential biases that may exist between the employee and the manager. Regular reviews help foster communication and the exchange of ideas, strengthening the relationship between manager and employee.

What you can do: Employees are happier when they can use technology to not only do their job better but gain new skills as well. Invest in HR processes that make it easy for employees to apply and start their job, track their time and access pay stubs and custom workflows; like BirdDogHR’s ATS, onboarding, time and attendance and core HR software solutions. Schedule a demo to see how updating your technology can help keep your employees happy and invested in working for your company.