Human Resources: All Your Players are Free Agents!

As the baseball season draws to a close, many managers are either making decisions to try to keep key players or wondering if they will walk as free agents to go other teams.  This happens from little league baseball all the way up to major leagues.  The same story holds true for companies and is one that employers and employees face every day.  It does not matter if you have a small business or are a Fortune 500 company, it is imperative that companies keep their key players.

One of the key factors to understanding of how to keep key players is to understand why they actually leave.   Leigh Branham, CEO of Keeping the People, has conducted over 19,700 post exit surveys and has provided employers some vision into why employees leave.  When questioning most Managers, almost 9 out of 10 said that the employee left for ” more pay” .

Much to the surprise of most business owners and managers, actually only about 1 out of 10 employees say that they left for ” more pay”.  In Ms. Branham’ s post survey 88% of employees left for reasons other than money.  These reasons are not obvious to most corporate leaders so she has written a book called ” The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave” .  In this book she outlines and enlightens corporate leaders why employees actively disengage and become “free agents” in the employer pool.

The seven hidden reasons employees leave are:

1. The job or work place is not as expected.
2. Job doesn’ t fit their talents or interests.
3. Little or no feedback and coaching.
4. Feel no hope for career growth.
5. Feel devalued and unrecognized.
6. Feel overworked and stressed out.
7. No trust or confidence in leaders.

Employers need to motivate employees.  Motivated employees are a company’ s best performers.  Only 25% of most corporate workers are actively engaged in the jobs that they perform.

Communication and engagement is the key to keeping valued employees.  When hiring employees is imperative to properly communicate job duties, corporate expectations as well as have an understanding of what the employee expects in return.  As a corporate leader, you should no longer be spending your ” sleepless” nights wondering if your key players are going to leave or stay, but instead focus on what have I done or what should I do to improve communications and engage and motivate my employees to want to be a part of ” our” successful business.  Refocusing your goals as a corporate leader will keep your key players close and minimize those who are looking to become ” free agents” and try out another team.