What Does Leadership Have to do With Employee Turnover?
Good employees are hard to find. Great employees are even harder to come by. When one of them leaves, it hurts. And we’re not just talking about your feelings.
Employee turnover hurts productivity, morale, and your bottom line. Busy Human Resource managers end up with more work on their already full plates in addition to dealing with the cost and effort that goes into hiring and training someone new. All of this can be even more aggravating when you thought you’d hired that perfect fit.
The thing is, even the most dedicated employee will consider leaving under the right circumstances.
It’s often said that employees don’t leave bad positions. They leave bad managers. If you want to hold onto your most creative and capable team members, you need to provide them with one critical incentive.
Inspired Leadership
Go-getters like other go-getters. If you hire someone for their awesome skills, outgoing personality and can-do attitude and then place that excited new hire with a negative boss or in a stagnant department, the honeymoon won’t last very long.
Even if they truly love the company product, goals and/or mission, your gold-star employees will soon feel disillusioned if they aren’t given the tools and the leadership necessary to succeed.
So what does inspired leadership look like? Let’s break it down to 10 key leadership attributes. Effective leaders:
- Lead by example
- Are open to new ideas
- Empower staff to succeed
- Make themselves accessible
- Create an inspirational vision
- Provide guidance and support
- Communicate openly and often
- Trust their teams and processes
- Recognize and reward hard work
- Value their employees as people
In this kind of environment, most employees will feel supported and successful. In addition to giving you their best and sticking around for the long haul, they may even refer other fantastic people to your team.
If there’s a lack of organizational or team leadership, the very same people in the very same jobs will have a very different experience. Instead of being excited about working for you and inspiring talented friends and colleagues to join them, they’ll be asking their friends about their workplace cultures and leadership styles. And potentially jumping ship.
Don’t let lackluster leadership be the reason your hard-earned hires leave. Commit to great leadership and your employees will be more committed to you.
Already have great leadership in place? Awesome. Do your employee benefits live up to the same high standards? Recruiting and retaining employees is easier when you can proudly offer a comprehensive benefits plan that makes your team members feel as valuable as they are.
At Sonus, this is what we do for clients throughout the Midwest every single day because we believe Happy Teams are Productive Teams. Get in touch to see how we can help your organization become a local employer of choice.
