How to Stop the Bleeding

I know I've been remiss in following up on this post. I hope you will all excuse my tardiness. I've been vacationing in Europe and took advantage of the opportunity to go on a few golf trips with my friends.

Here's the second installment of my post series on mitigating corporate attrition.

It Starts with Senior Management

The first, and most critical mistake, that most companies make is finding explainable truths about attrition that defy rudimentary logic. If you're faced with this problem, you have probably heard many of these caveat emptors such as: 1) we're being picked by our customers and competitors because of a shortage of qualified people in our expanding market; 2) It's to be expected that people in high-demand positions will seek new, highly compensated positions with other companies; 3) We've always been a breeding ground for new talent, and it's to be expected that some of our employees will move on in their careers. When they do, they will become emissaries who will send business back to us.

The unfortunate truth is that people with marketable skills usually leave for reasons other than compensation. The most frequent reason they leave is because of their direct managers -- either because their managers are incompetent for one reason or another or because the corporate culture is inflexible and/or intolerant.

In today's business environment, senior managers need to be eternally vigilant about signs that these failure modes have become prevalent in their corporate cultures. If this sounds familiar, then your company probably has a toxic culture that is chasing your valued employees away:

1) Employees feel that they cannot voice their concerns freely because it will result in career-threateneing retribution from their superiors.

2) Communication to employees about the status of the company, its marketing and business development plan, and head-on assessment and mitigation of employee concerns is infrequent, non-existant, and/or incomplete.

3) New hires are brought in at salaries greater than existing employees with similar qualifications and (usually) more experience.

4) Accomodations for "modern" employees who are increasingly challenged to find work-life balance are either non-existent or inadequate.

5) Over-emphasis on profitability, rather than future growth.

As a senior manager, it's your job to watch for these signs and take appropriate actions. All too frequently, senior managers in mid-sized to larger corporations are aware of such issues and fail to take action. Frequently, this happens because they, too, fear retribution from the C-Suite executives who tend to be old-school and have failed to recognize the changes in the work force environment that are necessary to retain valuable employees.

In my next post, I'll discuss what steps senior management can take to address these issues.

In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you want to fast-track an action plan to resolve these issues quickly and turn your corporate culture around to prevent the brain-drain problem you're facing.