Why do the Good Ones Quit and Leave and the Poor Ones Quit and Stay?

Why do the Good Ones Quit and Leave &rnThe Poor Ones Quit and Stay?
Part I

The Top Three Reasons are!
Reason Number Three; They feel under valued and neglected, and in fact they usually are. They often make less money than longer term employees and contribute much more. Managers are busy today dealing with a broad span of control and low performers who take a large chunk of their available time that top performers are often just left alone and neglected.
Reason Number Two; Your Performance Management System doesn’t support their need to out perform others or manage their fast tracking career. It just isn’t working well enough or fast enough to meet their high expectations of an employer. The “Best” want to work with the “Best” and expect to be managed by the “Best”.
Reason Number One; Because they can. High performers are the most desirable candidates in the escalating War for Talent. They don’t even have to go looking, organizations come and find them.

Reason number three usually stems from a manager’s mind set that; They’ll ask if they need help; If you don’t hear from me, assume everything is fine; If it isn’t broke don’t fix it; Consistent management means managing everyone the same way; And the real killer; Why would they want to leave, I like it here?

In reason number two, High Performers have very high expectations of themselves, their employers, managers and the rest of the staff. I intentionally avoided saying other team members because they are often lone-wolves and don’t play well with the other kids in the sandbox because they can’t keep up with them.

I am not saying that all high performers have unrealistic expectations. They do however, set standards and time-lines that are challenging for themselves and their employers.

In the past, I was responsible for hiring high potential MBA’s right out of school for one of Canada’s largest financial institutions. One of our biggest challenges was managing the recent graduate’s expectations. Most of them came out with the mind set that they would or should be a Senior Executive within two years. They had high expectations of our organization and we, like many others, didn’t have the capacity or mechanism in place to accommodate everyone’s lofty goals and dreams in the time-frames they expected.

Another reason companys experience high turnover of High Performers is because they are only hiring High Performers. They often lose a lot of them because the existing cadre of managers isn’t moving up or out fast enough to meet expectations, or create promotional opportunities. Some managers just can’t deal with promoting people faster than they themselves are being promoted.

This lack of opportunity may change over the next five years as the departure of the Boomers creates an enormous drain on the institutional knowledge of most organizations. The challenge for High Performers coming in will be obtaining the requisite knowledge they need fast enough. The remaining managers may also lack the experience to take over the new open positions and will have difficulty managing a cadre of new high performers who may be promoted past them.
I am not saying that the Managers who are left after the Boomer Breakouttm will not be good or High Performers. There will be high performing managers, lots of average ones and hopefully only a few weak ones.

Most organizations should consider using some of the departing Boomers as mentors and coaches to enhance the rate of learning of the remaining Managers and provide support for the new High Performers. These soon to be departed Boomers are not likely to take on this task while still employed, as many of them are already too busy, and perhaps are mentally winding down. They might, however, be willing to come back and work part time on a contract basis at reasonable rates to impart their many years of experience and expertise. It is vital that only the best Coaching-Managers are considered for this task and that the process is closely monitored and linked to your Career Tracking System and High Potential Candidate pool.

What do the experts say about the factors affecting Performance & Retention?
I think the comments in the following two surveys have even more validity for high performers.

A Towers Perrin Global Workplace Survey in 2005 identified the following key factors in employee retention.
1) My Manager understands what motivates me; 2) Challenging work not just more of the same; 3) Career advancement is known and supported; 4) My Manager is visible, honest & consistent 5) They are interested in me as a person not just an employee.

This lines up very well with a university study completed several years ago by Lester from the Univ. of Wisconsin and Kickul from DePaul University. They analyzed the factors involved in the psychological contract between employees and their employers. They discovered that what employees valued most and was significantly lacking in their organizations was “Competent Management”. The study also extrapolated that this was the strongest factor affecting employee attitude, performance and contributes significantly to the potential for them to leave.

Some Best Practices to help keep your High Performers:
• You can’t keep them all so identify the ones that are the most critical to your organization’s success and ask them “What needs to be done to keep you here and happy?” This will reduce the likelihood that they will get recruited away or worse, wander away out of neglect.
• Assign Mentors* to them and give them access to the Senior Management Team.
• Have a High Potential Review process and make sure it is objective.
• Make sure that Managers are having meaningful career discussions with High Performers as well as average employees to explain the opportunities and limitations of the organization.
• Consider creating a CLO (Chief Learning Officer) or CTO (Chief Talent Officer) position that is on the Executive Committee of the organization.

* Mentoring typically takes place down two or more levels and usually focuses on attributes and
organizational culture. (How things work around here.)
Coaching takes place at the same level or down one level and usually focuses on skills.
Why do the poor ones quit and stay?
Because the environment / management allows them to do it. Due to the War for Talent, many organizations today are settling for less than optimum performance from their existing employees. I am basing this on what I’ve heard from many managers (who shall remain nameless), in our performance management training sessions, that “a warm body is better than no body”.

In every organization today the work must go on and the increasing targets must be met regardless of the number of vacancies. This often translates into settling for average and at times less than average because it takes so much time to find, hire and train a new employee. In some cases managers are inappropriately optimistic that “maybe they’ll turn around if I just give them a little more time”. This seldom, if ever, happens when you are dealing with consistently poor performers.

What’s causing a lot of the problems?
Managers are not spending enough time, or aren’t properly trained on the Planning Phase of the Performance Management Cycle. “How much of what by when” is not a good enough target for poor or low performers. We encourage organizations to use our BSMARTR criteria when managers are jointly developing targets with their employees. This ensures that they set meaningful targets that you can’t drive a truck through and are left wondering why people are full of excuses at the end of the year for why they didn’t meet their targets.

Behavioural: This allows the Manager to establish softer targets or expectations about how the target is to be achieved. The Staff is clear about how to achieve the target and how they will be observed in the performance of their duties. Specific Competencies required to achieve specific targets can also be included.
Specific: Goals should be written down and understood by both the Manager and Staff. Avoid vague terms like “appropriate & satisfactory” unless further defined.
Measurable: Where ever possible use numbers and percentages and make the targets both quantitative and qualitative.
Attainable: All of the resources required to successfully achieve the targets should be discussed and available and Organizational barriers should be identified and plans put in place to remove them.
Realistic: Has the Employee performed at or near this level in the past?
Time Frames: Each target should have a specific completion date and where appropriate an elapsed time-frame especially if there are exte
al resource requirements.
Relationships: Who else needs to be a part of this target and is required for its successful achievement? Who else is affected by its outcome?

See part II of “Why do the Good Ones Quit and Leave and the Poor Ones Quit and Stay?” for more ideas and information on how to strengthen your Performance Management process & deal more effectively with the performance of people who are not High Performers but could contribute more.