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It’s a pain in the neck to job-hunt, and most working people wouldn’t take the time and spend the energy on a stealth job search if their current job were worth keeping.
One of the biggest problems in corporate and institutional workplaces is that poorly-equipped managers send their best talent away. They manage people so badly that their employees feel they have no alternative except to launch a job search and go work someplace else.
When an HR person sees multiple employees leaving the same manager for greener pastures and the best they can do by way of addressing the problem is to invite each departing employee to an exit interview on the way out, then your company is truly broken!
I was an HR person for eons. I knew what was going on in each department, because it was my job to know. It was my job to support the employees and also to support the managers. I had to talk with them and listen to them all the time in order to stay in touch. That’s what every HR person needs to do, but sadly too many HR folks don’t understand their role.
The biggest reason employees quit is their own manager. If they’re not heard when they share an opinion, if their contributions aren’t valued and if their boss tramples all over their personal obligations outside of work, why should they stay? The economy is much better now.
There are tons of jobs going unfilled at large and small organizations. It makes more sense — economically and emotionally — for an unhappy employee to move on than to try and change things at his or her current place of employment.
Here are ten ways lousy managers make their employees quit — to the detriment of their organizations, their customers and their shareholders. Can any organization really afford to let their talented team members walk out the door?
Ten Ways Lousy Managers Drive Employees To Quit
1. They don’t listen when their team members have opinions to share.
2. They have no respect for their teammates’ personal time.
3. They pretend that the department is a friendly and collaborative environment when they need extra work done, but when the employee needs a break either schedule-wise or otherwise, they say “No exceptions!”
4. They undermine their own employees in order to save face with other departments.
5. They ignore energetic disturbances and sticky topics that desperately need to be discussed.
6. They accept enormous breakthroughs and triumphs from their employees as normal, but pick at tiny infractions or errors.
7. They don’t stand up for their team members, because they are afraid to risk their own political capital.
8. They lie to their employees.
9. They refuse to look at alternative points of view.
10. They hold their employees to higher standards than they hold for themselves.
What can you do if you find yourself working for a person who fits this description? Can you reform your manager from the inside — and from a lower-level position than the one your manager holds? It’s not easy to do. You have to be ready to invest a lot of time and energy in the project, if you want to help your manager grow a backbone and find his or her voice.
Some working people find the effort worthwhile. They rejoice in small victories. Our friend Amelia got her fearful manager to stand up to his manager when a new vacation-time policy was handed down from on high.
The new vacation policy said that vacation time could only be used in one-week increments. Amelia told her boss Frank “The team will not put up with this. They will leave. People need shorter vacations than a week. This policy is crazy.” Frank agreed but he was afraid to say anything. Amelia reminded Frank how terrific their current team was and how hard it would be to replace any one of the team members, much less several or all of them.
When Frank finally worked up the courage to go see his boss Rajiv, it was a short meeting. Frank walked into Rajiv’s office and asked “Rajiv, do you have a second to talk about the new vacation policy?”
Rajiv was in a foul mood. “You hate it, too?” he asked. Frank was surprised. “My employees hate it,” said Frank. “Well, evidently all the employees hate it,” said Rajiv, sounding less angry and more resigned by now. “You’re the last supervisor to share that opinion, but now it’s unanimous.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Frank.
“We’re going to scrap the new policy and go back to the old one,” said Rajiv. Their conversation lasted less than a minute. Frank went back to his office and told Amelia about the conversation with Rajiv. “How did you feel when Rajiv told you he was scrapping the policy?” asked Amelia.
“Honestly, I felt like an idiot,” said Frank. “Evidently the other five supervisors in our unit had more backbone than I did. I was the last one to complain about a policy that never made sense. Now I have to work on getting closer to Rajiv so he asks my opinion before he enacts a policy — instead of afterwards.”
Amelia thought about it and realized that Rajiv had never asked Frank’s opinion about the policy, either before or after it was announced.
“I give Frank credit for taking baby steps out of fear and into trust,” Amelia told us, “but my career has to move faster than this. I am glad I gave Frank some moral support this time, but I need to work in a place where people are respected, and this is not the place. Good luck to Frank! Good luck to Rajiv! I’m off to a new adventure.”
Amelia got a job where they talk and debate issues all the time — in the hallway, in the break room and even in the parking lot. Nobody says “This decision is final! You have nothing to say about it.” They want Amelia’s input and everybody else’s input, too.
You deserve to work in a place like that. Maybe now is a great time to go find one!
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Liz Ryan is the CEO and founder of Human Workplace. Follow her on Twitter and read the rest of her Forbes.com columns here.
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