When Employees Leave a Company, Others Often Follow – WSJ:
They found that employees leaving often had a big impact on the ones who remained—but the average results hid some big splits among employees.
Take layoffs as an example. The authors found high-performing employees—employees whose performance reviews ranked in the top 40%—were often much more affected by layoffs than low-performing employees, those in the bottom 40%.
The attrition rate for high-performing employees increased by about a third to about 2% from 1.5% within six months of the layoff announcement. The attrition rate for low-performing employees, though, rose only modestly within six months of the layoff announcement, to about 2.15% from 2.01%.
Why? High-performing employees typically have more employment options, says Sima Sajjadiani, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s UBC Sauder School of Business and one of the paper’s co-authors. As a result, when layoffs are announced, these individuals might pre-emptively begin job searches to secure new roles rather than wait to see if they would be included in the layoff.
“Companies should consider the possible ripple effect when they make decisions about layoffs, especially because high performers are disproportionately affected,” she says.
I’ve seen companies commit suicide this way: forgetting their highest performing employees can easily find jobs elsewhere where they feel more appreciated. And “appreciation” does not come from dropping a six-pack of beer to be consumed at the end of business hours at a cluster of desks–as I saw at one place I used to work for. It comes from a culture of honest corporate appreciation for its employee’s efforts.
Which requires managers who actually know who their high performers are, who appreciate those efforts, who reward those efforts with monetary compensation, and who seek to help their lower-performing workers.
Unfortunately a lot of companies seem to promote an almost adversarial relationship between managers and employees. Others seem incapable of properly coaching their employees–and too many managers honestly don’t know what the hell their employees actually do.
And they’re just one high-performing employee departure away from collapse.