Leaders play a significant role in influencing workers’ decisions on leaving or staying in their organizations. According to statistics, approximately 40% of employees quit their jobs within the first six months due to bad leadership. Recruitment is an expensive and time-consuming activity, and one of the best ways to save on these costs is to improve the management. Described below are the flaws that organizational leaders should avoid to boost employee retention.
Disagreeable Management Styles
Leaders portray their bad management styles in different ways. For example, they might overwork employees, limit their freedom of expression, micromanage them consistently, and fail to give feedback and set clear targets.
These poor-quality leadership skills confuse and frustrate employees and affect their sense of direction. They also create a toxic work environment and negative work experience.
Most people prefer to leave such settings and join companies with better leadership. To avoid this problem, leaders should empower their subordinates and motivate them to participate in decision-making.
Wrong Treatment of Workers
How leaders treat their workers determines whether they will stay or leave the organization. For example, inappropriate treatment, such as sexual harassment, bullying, and favoritism, creates disparities and disunity among the team. It also contributes to a high turnover. Leaders should treat their employees equally, give them equal opportunities, and treat them as valuable assets.
Negative Attitude towards Workers
An organizational leader’s attitude towards his or her employees affects retention. For instance, a bad attitude causes the subordinates to feel underappreciated, undervalued, and unsupported. Consequently, the team is more likely to quit and move to a company whose leaders treat them better.
To increase the retention rate, leaders should reevaluate their behavior and avoid different unacceptable attitude practices like failing to consider employees’ ideas, ignoring their workplace concerns, focusing more on their weaknesses than strengths, and taking credit for their work.
In summary, the fight against high employee turnover highly depends on an organization’s frontline leaders. Various factors, such as the type of leadership styles these leaders implement, their attitude towards others, and how they treat their subordinates, determine whether they will choose to resign or stay in the organization. For this reason, leaders should work towards better management and creating a more positive workplace to reduce the turnover rate.