When an employee resigns and leaves your organisation, do you know the real reasons why?

There are literally dozens of reasons why employees leave an organisation. Some of the reasons could include poor working conditions, poor compensation and benefits or a bad boss.

However research by Leigh Branham and the Saratoga Insititue found that there are 7 hidden reasons that stand out amongst all of the multitude of reasons why employees leave.

According to Branham, the 7 top reasons why employees leave are:

1. The Job or Workplace Was Not As Expected

2. The Mismatch Between Job and Person

3. Too Little Coaching and Feedback

4. Too Few Growth and Advancement

5. Feeling Devalued and Unrecognized

6. Stress from Overwork and Work-Life Imbalance

7. Loss of Trust and Confidence in Senior Leaders

These are the top 7 reasons out of a long list of 67 reasons extracted from thousands of exiting employees.

When I looked at the list of 7 reasons, it dawned upon me that the reasons why employees leave have not changed very much after all these years. In fact, none of the 7 reasons have actually changed, even though our world has changed so much over the last decade!

The reasons employees leave an organisation have remained fundamentally the same.

What this implies is that organisations, leaders and managers continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, and the issues remain largely unaddressed or resolved. In addition, employee attrition and engagement have been in the news lately. A recent Gallup report on the “State of the Global Workplace??? reported that 67% of employees around the world are disengaged in their jobs.

If your organisation is losing people, then the above 7 reasons would probably be relevant to you.

So what should you do to stem the outflowing tide of Human Capital? How can you address all 7 reasons?

No one organisation would be able to address all 7 areas simultaneously. Every organisation has limited resources and it would be impossible for most organisations to tackle all 7 areas for improvement. With limited resources, trying to do too much and trying to address all 7 issues simultaneously would be close to impossible for most.

So what should organisations do? How should organisations approach this?

Here’s what I suggest.

First, break the list of 7 reasons down into 3 categories:

1. Issues that can be addressed at the hiring stage

• The Job or Workplace Was Not As Expected

• The Mismatch Between Job and Person

2. Issues that can be addressed by improving leadership and management capabilities

• Too Little Coaching and Feedback

• Too Few Growth and Advancement

• Feeling Devalued and Unrecognized

3. Issues that can be addressed by Senior Leadership

• Stress from Overwork and Work-Life Imbalance

• Loss of Trust and Confidence in Senior Leaders

Second, decide which category will yield the fastest results with the least resources (low hanging fruit). Which category you should address first as an organisation largely depends on what your organisation’s priorities are.

Third, set a time-line to tackle the category identified in the previous step.

Finally, get moving!

Clearly there are no silver bullets to reconciling these issues. The issues have to addressed systematically in order for organisations to experience any improvements in employee attrition rates.

Is your organisation experiencing high employee attrition rates? Or is your organisation struggling with low employee engagement levels?

Whatever it may be you are experiencing, addressing these 7 areas systematically will improve employee engagement and retention rates in your organisation.

Do you agree with my assessment?