A lot of people assume that when an employee quits their job, they’re doing so in an attempt to move on to “greener pastures” ‒ in other words, they’re taking a position somewhere else that pays more money.
According to one recent study conducted by the Harvard Business Review, however, this isn’t actually the case.
The vast majority of people don’t quit their jobs at all ‒ they really quit their managers.
Absolutely no employee or team member will want to commit to a company with leadership that they, at best, dislike; and, at worst, just don’t respect. If someone despises you, reverse psychology isn’t going to help anything. They’re not going to “work harder” or “stay longer” or “realize you were right all along and commit to your cause.”
They’re going to quit, and that’s just one of the common managerial mistakes that can easily be costing your business an enormous amount of money.
Mistake #1: Not Listening to Criticism... or Anything at All, Really
A very common mistake that a lot of managers make has less to do with when things are going well and is more about when they’re not.
Nobody is perfect ‒ least of all managers. Even the great business leaders fail often, but that’s more than OK, provided they learn from those experiences.
However, when someone comes to you with a legitimate concern, responding angrily or with frustration is only going to do more harm than good.
Pretty soon, people will start to think that you don’t value their opinion ‒ because your actions are proving that you don’t. At that point, they’ll start to look for new opportunities where they feel valued, and they’re likely going to leave.
When you consider that it takes an average of 51 days to fill an open position, and it can easily cost you up to 1.5 times that person’s salary to replace them, you begin to get a sense of why this is such a big (and costly) issue.
Mistake #2: Not Making Communication a Priority
When people feel like they don’t have the tools they need to do their jobs, they slowly start to “check out” from their daily duties. A lot of managers don’t realize that one of these tools is ultimately information: your expectations (and requirements) need to be communicated in a way that keeps everyone on the same page and moving forward.
If you only convey essential information after a job has been completed, it’s only going to lead to higher levels of employee disengagement among those who didn’t leave at the first opportunity to do so. Businesses with low levels of engagement are not only far less productive than average, but their absentee rates are also higher and they suffer from larger numbers of quality defects.
This also means you must make yourself available to address people’s concerns and answer their questions. If you want someone to feel as if they’re a part of a team, they also need to feel like the person in charge of that team knows what they’re doing.
Mistake #3: Being Quick to Receive Praise and Slow to Give It
Finally, one of the biggest mistakes that a manager can make involves failing to give credit where credit is due.
According to one recent report conducted by the experts at Achievers, a full 72% of employees said that employee recognition had the greatest impact on employee engagement at their current job. Another study revealed that at least 43% of highly engaged employees receive this type of feedback at least once per week. The same was true among only 18% of employees with low engagement.
Doling out praise can be a big gesture or a small one; it doesn’t matter, as long as it happens in the first place. Sometimes, going out of your way to let an employee know you noticed how hard they’ve been working is enough to make an impact. Other situations may call for a memo or even an announcement at your next staff meeting to let the whole team know about the quality job a particular person has been doing.
If you don’t give out credit at all, regardless of the quality of the work, engagement is going to begin to suffer very quickly. If it’s been all but confirmed in someone’s mind that you don’t care about the quality of the work they’re doing, why should they give their all to make sure the finished product is as good as it can be?
The answer is simple: They shouldn’t, so they won’t.
Any one of these mistakes can be potentially devastating in the wrong circumstances. But leaders making all of these blunders at the exact same time means costing their organizations more money than they even realize.
The good news is that none of these are permanent—it’s easy to correct your course and prevent people from living their lives with one foot out the door.
You just need to understand what these mistakes are, why they matter, and what you must do to avoid them.
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC writes for CountingWorks, an accounting news and advice website. Reach the firm at [email protected]
About Martinez & Shanken, PLLC
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firm based in Gilbert, Arizona. We provide a full range of accounting, bookkeeping, consulting, outsourcing and business services. Partners Deborah Martinez and Earl Shanken work to ensure your business accounting is done with integrity and to your satisfaction.
