Blue Sky

As somebody who recently switched jobs, I feel I can offer some helpful advice to companies who are looking to reduce churn. I’m often surprised when I hear managers say “I didn’t see it coming at all!“. The signs are glaringly obvious. This post is meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, and yet still 100% factual. Without further ado, in increasing orders of magnitude:

1) Your employee takes a lot of private calls in the conference room/empty offices. This one’s definitely ambiguous. Maybe they’re taking some recruiting calls, maybe they just got a new boyfriend they really like. It’s a tough call, but it might be time to pay closer attention.

2) Your employee talks about being so busy with work, but they don’t seem to be working that hard. It seems curious when your employee never has any free time, and yet, their workload hasn’t increased. There’s a reason though. It’s because they’re working hard on their resume and networking.

3) Your employee starts dressing like it’s their first day on the job again. Oops! This probably means they’re already out interviewing. Did they get in late? Take a long lunch? Leave work early to feed the dog? Yep, they are beginning to sniff around.

4) Your employee takes a lot of personal days at the beginning of the year. As everybody knows, you want to meter out your personal days evenly throughout the year in case something comes up and you need some time off. If your employee starts burning through all their days at the start of the year, it probably means they’re not planning on sticking around much longer. Letting your personal days run out means you’re committed to the idea of leaving.

5) Your employee says they’re unhappy. Ding ding ding! This list is not in chronological order. In my personal experience, I’ve always given off this bell first, but employers like to play chicken. I’ve heard all the reasons – it’s a down economy, no job will ever pay as well, this is the best job you’ll ever get, you should be satisfied, there will be opportunities down the road. Here’s the problem, none of those reasons matter when you have a smart, motivated and ambitious employee who wants to continue to learn and be challenged.

So here’s the lesson I hope to leave you with – your best people will always have opportunities elsewhere, no matter what’s going on with the economy or industry. If you can be just as successful without them, then continue to ignore the signs. But no complaining when the inevitable happens, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

None of this is to say that employers should take the Google route of algorithmically trying to detect who’s more likely to leave. At the end of the day, I think you’re probably not doing a stellar job as a manager if you need a program to tell you when your employee’s looking to leave instead of just listening to them and looking out for the glaring signs above. It’s also both the employer’s and employee’s responsibility to examine whether they’re doing right for the employee and the company. I really respect managers who acknowledge that taking another opportunity is a better choice for somebody, even when it means their own team is going to take a hit. Got other warning signs to look out for? Add them in the comments – here’s to a happy workplace!