Thursday, April 12, 2007

Why Attrition?

Though I have to update this blog for other things too, but in the interim, here's something academic, but true!
Every company faces the problem of people leaving the company for better pay or profile.

Early this year, Mark, a senior software designer, got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India operations developing specialized software. He was thrilled by the offer.

He had heard a lot about the CEO. The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, and the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb food.

Twice Mark was sent abroad for training. "My learning curve is the sharpest it's ever been," he said soon after he joined.

Last week, less than eight months after he joined, Mark walked out of the job.

Why did this talented employee leave?

Arun quit for the same reason that drives many good people away.

The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called "First Break All The Rules". It came up with this surprising finding:

If you're losing good people, look to their immediate boss. Immediate boss is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he 's the reason why people leave. When people leave they take knowledge, experience and contacts with them, straight to the competition.

"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

Mostly manager drives people away?

HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave, but a thought has been planted. The second time, that thought gets strengthened. The third time, he looks for another job.

When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial information. Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into trouble. You don 't have your heart and soul in the job."

Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit - often over a trivial issue.

Talented men leave. Dead wood doesn't.

Jack Welch of GE once said. A company's value lies "between the ears of its employees".

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:36 AM

    Abhinav,

    This is really interesting, very true. But i have a question, do managers realise the same when people they are managing leave?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Managers hardly realize their own fault - that's when the managers' managers should realize it and correct it. Or rather, that is what CXO's should be able to read from the pattern, the trend!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Abhinav, I agree to your point but this might not be the main reason. Different people have different reasons for quitting jobs and I think there is not one "most popular" reason as such.

    I guess its all about a match between the organization (or manager) and the employee. If the two do not match each other's requirements there is no point staying. And a company's requirements might not always be intelligent, hard working employees. They can also be things like docile, or yesmanship employees for example. But maybe they want only that!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Absolutely! But what I intend to convey is, most of the jobs are not rocket science, and can be learnt - if a person doesn't have the skill sets to satisfy the profile - however, the competencies should have match.

    And we call it "attrition" when there is discontent - and the main theme of discontent, more often than not, is the nature/relationship with your manager. That's why we see that when a manager moves to another firm, the team mostly follows the boss, if he's an ideal one.

    ReplyDelete