Friday, September 10, 2010

Oh boss, help me to stay here!

I always surprise why all HR related matters are placed on HR table. Off course, it is the responsibility of HR to look into all HR related matters. But most of the times, HR is not responsible for all HR related issues. Employees work with their team and line manager for more than 8 hours. The real issues are with this. Most of the times their line managers are responsible for HR issues in the organization.

You must have identified few reasons during exit interviews. The list goes like this:

a) Compensation
b) Learning opportunities
c) More responsibilities
d) Organizational Culture
e) Employer Brand.

There can be other factors apart from this. The exit interviews are conducted by some junior HR person, mostly getting filled the exit interview format.

When I had grilled such employees, most of the times, the reasons which I find which nobody wanted to put officially are as under:

Relationship with bosses:

The fact of the life is bitter and compensation is definitely important. But when any employee decides to change the job as per the market he gets 25-30% rise on his current CTC. And the cases I have seen most of the times are not the compensation. It is the boss, line managers who are responsible for the attrition.

New learning opportunities is the another reason employees tell. The programmer ends up doing the same job what he was doing in his earlier company. The maintenance engineer gets the title of Executive Maintenance, not adding any further value to his personality. Off course every experience is the learning.

Employees are like elephants. They remember and they act. You need to manage them properly. Sometimes, employees need emotional support. When you takes extra care of new employee and ignores old employee, he get hurts. Logically new employees struggle to create their position in the organization and hence may be more effective than old employees. But most of the managers favour this behaviour and give more weightage to the. The “left out feeling” creates dissatisfaction.

Generally speaking, when any employee leaves the organization, he assumes that he is going to get 4 more things in new company assuming that 10 things what he is getting here will also be available in new company. But when he joins there, he comes to know that yes he is getting 4 more things, but missing almost 4 another things which he was getting in his earlier company. 4 things, which can be more important in totality. That can be respect, culture, challenges, and even may be other benefits.

When line manger and off course HR will be able to gauge these factors, attrition can have little impact.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to say thanks for this information to me.

Interactive sessions said...

Hi Vinod i really appreciate your posting and what i found most interesting in this article was because of line managers & reporting managers most of the times attrition takes place. They should know how to tackle employee's expectation, need in terms of relevant input, support etc. time to time.

Rajiv Bharatwal said...

Again gr8 thought...I am agreeing with you the reason you mentioned for employee attrition.
One add-on from side people get excited when there is a learning culture in an organization. We can establish this through various ways like TPM,Kaizen,Knowledge management through Intranet site, Reward n recognition etc.People get excited when they are continually learning new things and get chance to implement their learning.

sanjayrakecha said...

Gud one Sir. Thanks

Suchita PS said...

One more piece of wisdom. There is sying "When somebody leaves you, just see his superior." Fully Agreed Vinod. Waiting more.

Pooja76 said...

Dear Vinod
good material. best part in this is Earlier Saying vs actual facts. keep on posting such material.

pooja

Neha Mehta said...

We have a very old saying in HR - "People don't leave organizations, they leave their bosses". I guess your blog says it all :)

Prithvi Ashiyana Centre said...

Dear Sir,
I am also agree with the reasons of employees attrition. A learning organizational culture must be created and we should also try to recruit committed employees.

Anonymous said...

Great thoughts as usual Vinod.

But, let me play the devils advocate here. Your premise here is that it is the line managers job to ensure HR practices are being followed and it is because of the Manager that a person leaves.

Somehow, it seems that HR wants to do away with its responsibilities and put the onus of retention on others in the organization. Doesn't this also mean that these same line managers should also be awarded for the retention of the employees and that the HR Managers cannot take the credit for retention !!

Does this also mean that the Good manager do not have attrition?

Also, what is the effort the HR is making towards:
a: Intervention for Identifying weak managers and putting them thru some serious management training
b: Talent engagement
c: Organization's cultural transformation

If the HR guy is making these efforts then people should not leave the organization.

Some missing questions here ....

Vipul Agarwal
Zend Consulting Services

Shabbar Suterwala said...

It is rightly said "people don't leave organizations.. people leave managers"

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