Why your workers leave … and what to do about it

I hear from employers on the regular who lament the lack of “stick-to-it-ive-ness” in employment candidates these days. “No one wants to work anymore,” or “They expect raises and promotions in the first couple of weeks,” or “They leave for lunch and never come back,” and “They are glued to their phones instead of doing their jobs,” I think I might have heard it all.

It seems illogical, really. The number of people who are not only unemployed but long-term, no longer counted in the metrics, unemployed is staggering at the moment. Wouldn’t basic supply and demand dictate that if you have even one job opening you’d have a luxurious choice of highly qualified, engaged, and enthusiastic potential staff members? Why, then, do so many employers experience a revolving door of seemingly lazy, short term, slackers who rarely show up, walk off the job, and fail to do their jobs even moderately well when they do decide to turn up?

Meanwhile, I also meet employers who have shop floors and front offices that are fully staffed with conscientious, hard-working, dedicated employees who have been on the payroll for years. What are the second set of employers doing that the first set seem to be overlooking?

The World Economic Forum might have the answers. They report that:

The truth is that workers want to build careers, not just collect paychecks. Forty-two percent of employees who voluntarily left their jobs report that their employer could have prevented their departure. The top reasons for turnover – inadequate pay, lack of advancement opportunities, not feeling seen or valued at work, scheduling inflexibility – are all within an employer’s power to address

Some I speak with tell me they do have clear career progressions and innovative scheduling policies. But rarely do they address the elephants in the room: adequate pay and feeling seen or valued at work.

I once spoke with the owner of a small, family run manufacturing facility who complained in one breath that “No one wants to work since Covid” and in the next told me “I really would rather be on the golf course [than working in the family business]”

Guess what? Your employees want that too.

His sentiment showed in how the business was operated. The orders they bid on and selected were piece-rate commodities for buyers like Amazon. Every shift saw a different, random part rolling off the assembly line, each one bringing in less and less profit due to commodity pricing. There was no purpose, no vision, no “why” behind the business … well, except to provide the owner with adequate time on the links.

And because profits were continually squeezed by their customers, wages were not keeping up with the cost of living.

The United Way tracks income levels compared to cost of living in more than 30 states and the District of Columbia, and the data is not pretty. It shows that 42% of US families live below the “ALICE Threshold.” This means that “54.5 million households struggle to afford basic necessities like housing, food, and health care.”

If you weren’t making enough money to adequately care for yourself or your family, how engaged and enthusiastic would you be at work?

I’m not trying to pretend that balancing the many costs of running a business with providing a living wage, autonomy, flexibility, and a sense of purpose is easy. What I am saying is that it’s absolutely necessary if you hope to develop a resilient organization, one where employees, owners, customers, and community members alike are all thriving, engaged, and enthusiastic.

The next time a new employee asks for a raise, or a staffing firm recruit disappears into thin air after lunch, maybe consider changing the recording that’s playing in your head. We don’t have any control over how others act. What we do have is total control over how we respond. What are your employees saying about why they’re leaving? And what might you change about the way you’re running your business to encourage them to stay?

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