You put in really hard efforts to hire employees; you invest your time, money and energy to acquire the best of talent in your organisation. No doubt, you want it to stay longer and become a building block in company’s success.
With the changing corporate dynamics, same efforts need to be put in retaining talent and holding onto potential employees. How can you improve it?
Making your employees more engaged and satisfied will certainly help. But what will you do to achieve that?
There is apparently no ideal organisation where entire workforce is happy, satisfied and committed. Some spoilt brats are always there spoiling others, or some victims are always suffering in certain corner of the organization.
You definitely need to find out the ones that will place you at higher horizons and can be the future organisational pillars. But, more than that, you need to recognize the ones that are about to say goodbye to you.
Probably a warning bell or a pre-alarm might help you spot the individuals who are planning to leave making you look here and there to fill vacant positions. There are certain indicators that can help you with these.
Through a number of surveys, here are the consolidated 7 indicators that indicate that an employee is about to leave you and you need to look into the matter right now!
1) Casual Work Attitude
Once a thumbs up employee suddenly starts exhibiting a sloppy attitude towards work. One, who never missed deadlines and worked with complete responsibility and dedication, now starts missing deadlines. Moreover, the quality is also compromised at certain places. Or a die-hard punctual person now starts coming in late or leaving early.
If these things happen occasionally, deadline slip-up or getting late due to genuine reason mean nothing, but if it starts on a continual basis, then it’s a matter of concern!
These are the clear symptoms that either the individual is tired of routine tasks or is completely disengaged from the company. You must take time out and try to figure out where the problem is!
2) Frequent Day-off Requests
If a usually regular guy starts asking for random day-offs, or remains out of office with no prior intimidation, you must start worrying as something is cooking up in his mind.
Odd day-off request might be coming as the employee doesn’t want to get any paid leave remaining since he’ll be leaving in a few days.
This is the most common indicator that one of your desks is going to be vacant soon!
3) Sudden Formal Attire
It’s strange to see a usually casually dressed individual in strict formal attire. An employee is definitely about to quit if he starts dressing formally for office few times a week.
There can be two things: either the employee just opened a new suitcase of formals, or he wants to bring in a change. Now it’s your experience and intellect to detect what level of change such employees are trying to bring in.
If the day-off requests and formal attire are coming in jointly, wake up and start looking for a back-up plan!
4) Unexpected Personality Change
This is a serious sign, if a happy-go-lucky employee suddenly starts complaining about each and every thing at office, politics, working style, working conditions, co-workers, etc.
Either he is frustrated with his own job or is trying to influence others and spoil office culture since he’ll be leaving in a few days.
5) Segregation
If one of your employees starts moving into his nutshell, detaching himself from others, he is up to something! Taking personal calls, taking more rounds of calling area, spending time alone… These are the red flags seeking serious attention.
These employees might be taking calls from recruiters, or contacting friends to find other job for them.
6) New Life Events
You must take more interest in employees who are undergoing some serious life events such as marriage, divorce, death of a loved one, child birth, sudden illness, anything! As during such situations, an individual’s state of mind is completely volatile and he needs a proper guidance or consulting to take right decisions.
In case you fail to do so, be prepared for any sudden vacancy.
7) Minimal Interaction with Colleagues
This is probably the danger sign! When your employee starts disengaging him or starts maintaining distance, he has definitely find a new destination and doesn’t feel the need to cater personal or work relationships at current workplace.
Or if a normally outspoken employee starts being unexpectedly silent during meetings, its time you must get into the matter and find out what’s wrong!
These are the major danger signs that clearly indicate that something is wrong with particular employee, and you need to roll up your sleeves to handle the situation smartly. It depends on how cleverly you spot the pain point and convince the employee to stay back or in case he has already find something better, how proactively you design your back-up plan!
Bio: Prateek Sharma is the Director at TrogonSoft, a company applying product development technologies and devising innovative technology products. Their product, TeamWise, an HRMS & Payroll Software enables companies to streamline and automate all their routine employee-related tasks with utter precision and accuracy.
