Letting Staff Know You Are Leaving

​Editor's Note: SHRM has partnered with Harvard Business Review to bring you relevant manufactures on central HR topics and strategies. In this article, the authors outline how HR and management tin spot when an employee is considering leaving the organization.

Despite a century of speculation past managers and scholars, nosotros know very niggling about whether sure cues or signs exhibited by employees can predict whether they're nigh to quit.

To help managers and companies identify employees at run a risk of quitting, we investigated this very question and uncovered a set of behavioral changes exhibited by employees—what nosotros dub pre-quitting behaviors—that are strong predictors of voluntary quits in the 12 months after they are observed by managers. Our research was inspired past a report past evolutionary psychologists David Buss and Todd Shackelford showing that romantic partners give off cues that point whether they are committing infidelity. A serial of classic studies by psychologist John Gottman supports this, identifying how certain verbal and nonverbal cues expressed past married couples during brief videotaped interactions can forecast their eventual divorce.

But the romantic realm isn't the simply place where cues can take place. Poker players give off "tells" that reveal the force of their hands, while American football players read their rivals' behaviors to make up one's mind how they volition deed afterwards the brawl is snapped. And inquiry shows that criminals have become savvy at identifying informants or undercover officers in their midst.

To empathise how tells might play out in the workplace, we start sought to identify a large set of behavioral changes employees exhibit that point their future turnover. We asked well-nigh 100 managers to answer the following question: Think for a moment of the peers and subordinates who have voluntarily quit your organization in the last two years. How was their behavior different in the months prior quitting that might have told yous they were on their way out? We also asked 100 employees to describe their ain changes in behavior earlier leaving a previous chore. These inquiries yielded over 900 different pre-quitting behaviors. The survey respondents reported relatively odd behavioral changes (e.chiliad., "stopped caring about their personal appearance;" "became aggressive toward other employees") likewise as many common ones (east.m., "less willingness to volunteer for special projects;" "decreased attendance at staff meetings").

For the next phase of the inquiry, nosotros edited and pruned the listing of 900+ behaviors into a structured 116-item questionnaire. Nosotros administered this provisional survey to iii additional samples of managers. The outset fix of managers rated how often previous leavers enacted these behaviors before quitting. One-half of the 116 behaviors were eliminated because they occurred infrequently (e.grand., "They asked co-workers for contacts at other companies;" "They exhibited sudden and frequent changes in their mood"). We then circulated this reduced survey to another group of managers who rated how ofttimes their electric current subordinates showroom these actions. Nosotros next analyzed these ratings and isolated a cluster of 13 highly correlated behaviors that best represent employees' proclivity toward near-future voluntary turnover. Finally, we double-checked this finding by request one more group of managers to describe their employees' behaviors with the final 13-particular survey.

The pre-quitting behaviors that made the cutting are below:

1. Their piece of work productivity has decreased more than usual.
2. They take acted less like a squad role player than usual.
3. They have been doing the minimum amount of work more frequently than usual.
4. They have been less interested in pleasing their director than usual.
5. They have been less willing to commit to long-term timelines than usual.
6. They have exhibited a negative change in attitude.
7. They have exhibited less try and work motivation than usual.
8. They have exhibited less focus on job related matters than usual.
9. They have expressed dissatisfaction with their current chore more frequently than usual.
10. They have expressed dissatisfaction with their supervisor more frequently than usual.
11. They have left early from work more frequently than usual.
12. They have lost enthusiasm for the mission of the organization.
13. They have shown less interest in working with customers than usual.

The most interesting take-away from this 2d phase of our enquiry were the behaviors that did not survive our screening process. Note that the 13 key behaviors practice not include "wearing dressier clothes to piece of work," "leaving a resume on the printer," or "missing work for doctors' appointments more than frequently than usual."  These and many similar behaviors, which have entered into managers' folklore of key signs of impending departure, were rarely observed or did non statistically hang together with the core behaviors representing a general predilection to quit. Such behaviors may predict future turnover, but not every bit consistently as the 13 core pre-quitting behaviors across a wide range of jobs, industries, and geographies.

In our last study, we investigated how accurately the 13 cadre pre-quitting behaviors predicted futurity voluntary turnover. In January and Feb of 2014, nosotros asked a large sample of managers, all employed with different companies, to use the 13-item survey to describe recent behavioral changes by a randomly selected subordinate. So, 12 months later we contacted the managers over again to run into if these employees were nonetheless employed or had voluntarily quit. Afterward statistically controlling for various employee attributes that might predict future turnover (age, tenure, teaching, etc.), also as managers' personal expectations of whether or not the employee would quit in the adjacent 12 months, our scale still predicted an employee's voluntary turnover. The more an employee exhibited the 13 pre-quitting behaviors, the more probable she was to quit.

More specifically, when they rated an employee based on each behavior (ane = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; iii = neither agree nor disagree; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly concord), those with an average score of 4.2 or college had an expected probability of turnover two times the typical employee. Other factors tin can affect whether someone leaves an organization, of course, but a score this high suggests the risk of turnover is high plenty to warrant attention.

The next logical question is what you should practice when someone you manage is exhibiting these behaviors—or how you should think about them if you yourself are looking for another job.

For managers, our advice is to focus on retaining star employees in the short-term. Typically, organizations handle a turnover problem with large scale interventions to ameliorate departmental or business firm-level commitment, task satisfaction, and job date. These strategies may work, but they take time to design and implement. Thinking in terms of the turnover risk of specific employees allows you to invest your fourth dimension and resources into those employees who create the about value and are really at run a risk of leaving.

There are many ways to invest in employees you fear may be looking: pay increases, promotions, special projects, etc.  1 technique is to use what are called "stay interviews."  Instead of conducting just exit interviews to learn what caused good employees to quit, hold regular i-on-1 interviews with electric current high-performing employees to acquire what keeps them working in your organization and what could be changed to go on them from straying.

It's also worth noting that employees in the midst of leaving often have customers or proprietary production information with them. And every bit nearly of usa know, a quick difference tin can leave a pigsty in company operations that creates long term harm. While information technology's important to realize that there is no guarantee that employees exhibiting pre-quitting behaviors will definitely leave, those identified equally flight risks should be monitored for unsavory behavior. Succession planning for their departure may prevent damages arising from unexpected quits.

And if you lot're in the market for a new task? Hiding your own pre-quitting behaviors may prove difficult. Given the negative consequences of turnover, know that your managers and peers are likely watching for obvious and subtle changes in behavior—and that no unmarried action is a dead giveaway. Instead, patterns of behavior over time that may seem subtle to you might tip off your boss. We suggest that you stay engaged with your work, continue to evidence enthusiasm for the mission of the organization, and project a consistent level of relational energy to the members of your work team.

The basic tenet of managing turnover is that everyone eventually leaves. Merely the "when" tin feel similar a mystery. While our research shouldn't be considered the only way to identify an employee on the verge of quitting, it does indicate to a prepare of behaviors that, taken together, can provide a clue—and it discounts behaviors that have mistakenly been seen as tells. And then the next time you take an inkling nearly whether someone is nearly to leave, know that you lot may exist onto something when y'all take the right indicators into account. As Dolly Parton sang, "Though you oasis't left me still, I know you lot're just every bit proficient as gone."

Timothy M. Gardner is an Associate Professor of Direction at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.

Peter W. Hom is a Professor of Management at the W. P. Carey Schoolhouse of Business at Arizona State University

westharoven.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/signs-that-someone-is-about-to-quit.aspx

Share this post