57 percent of employees quit because of their boss. Yikes.
This is one of those facts that many business owners hate to hear. It means that you might be the reason you can’t seem to hold onto the talent you need to succeed. It might also be you’re hiring managers that lack the skills to nurture and support their team.
Either way, knowing that bad bosses can chase your talent away is a reason to ensure you and your management team have the skills required to reduce employee churn.
How Bosses Chase Away Your Employees
Here are the signs your managers are the cause of your high turnover:
- Micromanagement: Employees are hired for their skills to perform their duties. When they are micromanaged, their skills are diminished, and they are also often underutilized. As a result, production suffers as well as employee incentive to stay.
- Lack of team involvement: Managers who fail to ask for input from their teams miss out on important insights only those doing the work can share. It not only can impact productivity negatively but also makes staff feel underappreciated. The valuable input is one of the best ways to work smarter across your departments. Also, staff feel more invested when their opinions are asked, and their voices are heard.
- Lack of listening skills: Bosses who fail to listen to their team run short on ideas. Managers should not demand their team agree with their ideas, or worse, make it difficult for those who ask questions. It should be a two-way street with ongoing communication where ideas are shared, welcomed, and encouraged.
- Lack of resources: Ongoing training, participation in industry events, interdepartmental training, and more all contribute to a team with skills they can apply to their jobs and careers. When bosses fail to provide the proper resources for teams to do their jobs, or worse, create obstacles, employees become frustrated and seek work elsewhere.
- Obstacles to advancement: Along with not providing resources for success, bad bosses tend to present obstacles that keep strong employees from advancing within the company. This can be due to managers feeling threatened, a lack of training themselves, or even selfishness because they don’t want to lose a team member they depend on. However, most team members want to know there are career advancement opportunities and have a manager who assists them in creating and following their career path.
- Lack of integrity: Managers who fail to set a good example for their employees quickly lose respect. Managers must demonstrate both a commitment to their work, as well as a sense of integrity in the way they conduct themselves. Unethical behavior puts employees in a position where they might have to make a choice to go against their own ethics. This creates a toxic work environment that chases ethical employees away.
As a business owner, consider your own management methods and make an effort to adopt a style and culture that keeps employees engaged.
Common Traits of Poor Management Styles
There are some common personal traits bad managers share including:
- Thriving on conflict
- Taking credit for things they didn’t do
- Racism or prejudice that interferes with a commitment to diversity
- Lack of skills
- Favoritism
- Allowing personal feelings to interfere with decisions
- Lack of judgement
- Immaturity
- Cruelty (Bullies)
- Abusive or sexually inappropriate behavior
All of these traits are sure to chase skilled employees away. As a business owner, it will behoove you to seek out managers who have strong leadership qualities who will use the resources at their disposal to provide incentives for employees to stay. You can also be sure to create a growth-oriented business where employees feel appreciated and where their skills are used.
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