Blog: Claudia Imhoff

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How to Tell if an Employee is About to Leave

There are several sequential and predictable steps that occur as an employee moves in the direction of leaving his or her current employer. I underscored the predictable part because it seems that some managers are so busy or clueless that they would not notice if their employees walked around with signs hanging off them stating "Hate my job -- hate my boss" or "Looking for anything better than this!"

Here are a few of these steps and why they occur...

Research uncovered these findings about how and why people "disengage" from their current company:

1. The majority of voluntary turnovers -- a whopping 63% -- are precipitated by some kind of "shocking event". Turns out these are rarely pay-related events (like no raise, no bonus, etc). The common ones for employees are realizing that the job was not as promised, replacement of current boss with a new one that they don't like, being assigned a new territory, learning that the company is doing something unethical, an incident of sexual harassment or racial discrimination, being pressured to make unreasonable family or personal sacrifices, being asked to perform menial duties not part of the original job, a disagreement with the boss, conflict with a coworker, and an unexpectedly low performance rating...

2. About 20% of departing employees leave WITHOUT having another job in hand. That is amazing to me. I can put up with a lot to keep a paycheck coming in. They must be really unhappy to do such a desperate act.

3. Many talented employees keep an eye out for other jobs while working and decide to interview with other companies "just for practice", to create a "plan B", or to test their marketability. Guess practice makes perfect.

4. Exit interviews do not uncover the event that lead to the turnover and so rarely get to the root cause of the departure. Too bad -- that means that the problem is still occurring or will happen again and again.

So what are the signs that an employee is jumping ship? Increased absenteeism, tardiness, or other behavior that indicates withdrawal or negativity toward the company. I used to work with a guy who started parking in his boss's parking spot after he was turned down for a promotion. Looking back, I guess it was pretty obvious what he had on his mind... especially when he kept spitting in his boss' coffee when the boss wasn't looking!

Do you have any stories to share?

Yours in BI success,

Claudia

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