Should I Stay or Should I Go?

"Should I Stay, or Should I Go!?"

My Job Here is Done™ Transcript (for general use only – machine-generated and it may not be accurate.)

NOTE: This transcript and the audio portion of this episode may contain colorful language that may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Dave (00:23) I remember a few years ago I got a call from a CEO friend of mine who was looking for some advice, he said that a few long-term and really good employees were “suddenly” resigning, and he was puzzled.

Kelli (00:25) Well, how were they treated when they were there?

Dave (00:28) Good, I guess. He seems to have a good culture, relatively low turnover in general. I think he had a pretty good pay scale, bennies, all that kind of stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary. What makes you say that?

Kelli (00:39) I can tell you from my experience, that what your CEO friend might have thought about how the company treated those employees, compared to reality, is likely the entire problem.

Dave (00:53) Hi, I'm Dave and I've been starting and running businesses all my life. And I'm Kelli, working for the man like a dog for decades. And you are you the driven career professional clawing your way up the ladder of success. Maybe running your own business. The next 20 minutes or so is just for you.

Dave (01:12) Welcome to My Job Here Is Done. Hi and thanks for joining us today, I'm Dave

Kelli (01:22) and asking the question, should I stay or should I go? I'm Kelli and welcome to the Podcast. Before we get started, just a quick reminder that you can learn more about the podcast, listen to all the previous episodes, read our bonus blog material, and interact with us at our website My Job Here Is Done.com 

Dave (01:46) and on social media at My Job podcast. This is the one about your good employees leaving suddenly and why you as a leader and manager are surprised but shouldn't be. Kelli's on a tangent here, I can tell. So let's get this all figured out before it gets ugly for me and even more ugly for you as a leader.

Kelli (02:08) Before we dig into why good, seemingly happy employees quit, let's look at a few abominable problems that, in my opinion, plague every business.

Dave (02:17) Abominable. I told you that she was all wound up.

Kelli (02:21) This is not just a problem created by the company these really good employees work for. The problem, for lack of a better word, is also a cultural issue of the current generation of professional workers. And it's a good culture.

Dave (02:34) Wait, having people suddenly quit a good job with no internal issues to speak of is a good thing? A good culture?

Kelli (02:42) Yes. Hey everyone, listen. Go out, quit your job. Seems like you'll benefit from that if you look at some statistics.

Dave (02:49) Kelli, you can't go telling people to quit their jobs. What has got you so spun up?

Kelli (02:53) I'm just so tired of hearing all of the promises made by employers and leadership about employee career advancement opportunities they say are available and how they have ways for you to make more money if you work hard and how they promote from within when in reality, for the most part, after a while, you figure out that's a bunch of empty words. There's no process for people to understand how to advance, no published pay scales to help entice expectations. No on-the-job career guidance, nothing. Where's the Tylenol?

Dave (03:26) Wait before you all start marching with Kelli holding homemade My Job Here is Done signs. Let's all take a chill pill for a second and look at the reality of what's going on. People, your employees are not staying in jobs today for nearly as long as they did back in the day. Even yesterday.

Kelli (03:46) Yeah. Decades ago, employees finished their career where they started it. They liked the job security and stayed with the same company for their entire working life.

Dave (03:55) Let's look at some of those statistics. The most recent data on employee tenure in the US, based on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, reports that the median employee tenure for men is 4.3 years and 3.9% if you're a woman.  The median tenure for the age group 25 to 34, which is the up and coming workforce, that's only like 2.8 years. That's not long at all.

Kelli (04:26) Not at all. And as you would guess, the median tenure was higher for older workers aged 55 to 64. That was 9.9 years.

Dave (04:35) So those are interesting statistics, and I think they may actually even be a little long from what I've seen. But there are some good reasons why employees leave.

Kelli (04:44) What are some.

Dave (04:45) You’ve outgrown your current position. You just feel like you've outgrown yourself in that particular environment or you feel like you're not being heard, which is common. You're isolated or you're not invited to meetings, or you don't actually find a way to get to meetings and have your voice heard or your opinions aren't asked for. You've had a life-changing event. You got married. You moved. You came into global money through an inheritance.

Kelli (05:14) Yes. Or you decided to do a career transition into a new field or start your own company, I mean business.

Dave (05:23) Right. You want to check out the episode called My Dad Ran a Business. My dad Ran a Company for more on the difference between a business and a company. But anyway, go on, Kelli.

Kelli (05:34) Another one - maybe you achieved what you set out to do. You hit your personal exit strategy goal.

Dave (05:40) Right. And good for you because as you know from Kelli and I, everybody needs an exit strategy. So if you just hit it, that's a great reason for leaving.

Kelli (05:49) Or maybe you learn the competition is offering more of what is important to you. Money, maybe work/life balance, flexibility (maybe you're looking for remote work benefits), culture, any of those things.

Dave (06:01) So these are some of the good reasons why employees leave. Now, we're going to take this apart in a minute where we can say some of these are controllable and some are uncontrollable. But in the end.

Kelli (06:11) They’re really good reasons and here’s a troubling reason, and I think a very important reason that you would leave your current job - Is it affecting your physical or mental health?

Dave (06:22) Oh, yeah. And then there are some bad reasons to leave a job like you're in line for a promotion and you didn't get it. Unless that's a pattern that you've seen where you have been qualified for a promotion, but you keep getting passed by. There's probably a reason there, but it's probably a good enough reason for you to stay and explore the reason.

Kelli (06:46) So instead of leaving, what can you do? Well, you could meet with the decision-making leadership and ask why, even though it may be something you don't want to hear, do you have enough emotional intelligence to accept their perspective? Can you grow from the feedback if they don't think you're ready? Maybe they did you a favor, right?

Dave (07:04) Another bad reason to leave is that you're feeling that you're not appreciated.

Kelli (07:09) So ask yourself, are you the kind of person that needs a lot of feedback? If so, go ask for it. You don't have to quit.

Dave (07:16) Some of the responsibility of being happy and satisfied on the job does fall on you.

Kelli (07:21) Absolutely.

Dave (07:22) We feel another reason why it's a bad idea to quit is because you just don't feel challenged with your work.

Kelli (07:29) I get it. No one wants to feel like they're doing more for the same salary, but sometimes it's the price you pay to prove yourself in the short term.

Dave (07:38) Yeah, this is the paying the dues thing.

Kelli (07:41) Exactly. You don't want to be the bargain employee long-term - more workload, no increase in pay. But for the short term, you can prove you're ready for that responsibility.

Dave (07:52) And it's important that you are showing that kind of initiative. It's part of growing your career. Also, you need to be careful that you don't fall into the trap of the old saying, if you want something done, give it to somebody who's busy. Then the next thing you know, you're even busier and you're not getting the credit for it. Sometimes you've just got to self-promote a little bit.

Kelli (08:13) Another not-so-great reason people leave is because they feel they're underpaid. Hey, if you think you deserve more dough, go ask for it.

Dave (08:20) What might happen is that your boss or your leader says to you, hey, listen, I can give you more money, but you need to take on more responsibility. That may be a wake-up call to you, right?

Kelli (08:30) So a lot of these reasons we just gave really fall on you. Communicate. Communicate with your leaders, communicate with your managers. Let them know, hey, I'd like some more responsibility. I'd like some more dough. I'd like a little bit more feedback on my performance. You can be in charge. And also, sometimes you're putting yourself on their radar screen. Maybe they weren't thinking about you in those ways and now they are.

Dave (08:56) And a horrible reason to leave is because you're just pissed off and acting reactionary.

Kelli (09:02) Yeah, grow up.

Dave (09:02) And sorry not to be pointed or nasty or anything, but grow up. Grow up. It's all about you. It's all about your ability to make an impression, do some hard work, and outdo your competition. That slacker sitting next to you, right?

Kelli (09:20) Hey, listen, we've all been pissed off about something at work, but don't act like a child. Stomp your feet and Slam the door. That doesn't get you anywhere.

Dave (09:29) I told you that she was all wound up. And the AHA moment we hope for this episode is, sadly, once you really do have a good employee in the system, they're often abandoned by you.

Kelli (09:44) Yes, abandoned. Just like your cell carrier that you've been with for five years. They have all of these great offers for new customers. And you, who's been paying the exorbitant prices for five years. Screw you.

Dave (09:59) Most of a leader's time and that of HR is dealing with employee problems or new hires. I rarely see a company-sponsored program that gives equal time to nurturing and caring for the current good employees.

Kelli (10:12) And that's why when they leave you, it's always a surprise. Think about when you didn't have your eye on that ball and you whiffed you missed it. It went right past your nose.

Dave (10:22) This is when you go balls to the walls trying to recover from that surprise resignation. Now you decide that you're going to offer the person more money. Now you talk about more responsibility. Now you talk about the next career steps.

Kelli (10:39) Now you slip that sealed envelope to them with the new incredible handwritten offer amount.

Dave (10:45) It's like a giant show. It's just wrong.

Kelli (10:49) This was and is the absolute wrong time to be reacting like this.

Dave (10:54) Yeah, sure, it might work every once in a while, but there's collateral damage that is not normally calculated in the process.

Kelli (11:01) If you keep an employee this way, it sends a message to the other good employees. They know who they are. That the best way to get a really good race is to quit.

Dave (11:09) It sounds really bad. Vuju Voodoo what is it? Is it mojo? Voodoo?

Kelli (11:16) It's not mojo.

Dave (11:17) It's not mojo. It's juju.

Kelli (11:19) I don't know.

Dave (11:20) Whatever it does, it sends a really bad message to the employees.

Kelli (11:24) It's so much easier to appreciate and care for your employees all along, as opposed to waiting till the last minute when they're fed up, they've had it up to here with you and they hand in that resignation for you to start paying attention to them.

Dave (11:37) Exactly.

Kelli (11:37) That's a weird company culture and you don't want it, right?

Dave (11:40) Bottom line is that in most cases, you could have prevented the resignation. You missed clues, you lacked an important process and more on that in just a few moments.

Kelli (11:52) Then there's one more really good reason why a stellar employee leaves and you can't get them to stay and you shouldn't. Leaders and HR , you might already know this, but it's worth a reminder. The best reason a good and valued employee tells you it's time for them to leave is because it's the right thing for them to do.

Dave (12:12) Yes, good people get recruited, they look for new opportunities. And when they leave to expand and grow into better professionals, in many cases, you have no choice but to let them go and celebrate with them.

Kelli (12:27) Sometimes it's just time to go.

Dave (12:29) This may be the perfect opportunity for a quick short story. I recall one time when a valued employee of mine resigned. He was in a leadership role and knocking it out of the park consistently. I always tried to make sure I knew what my direct reports and what the next level on the team needed. I went out of my way to listen, appreciate and have their backs and making sure they got the kudos when things went well while I practiced what Kelli and I have talked about on the show before, the continuous review program.

Kelli (12:59) Awesome. And we did talk about that and more in our episode, You're fired. No, I'm fired.

Dave (13:05) Bottom line, I was shocked when he told me he was resigning. I actually took it really personally and I was deeply troubled because I thought I missed something until I asked him why he wanted to leave. Was it something I did, something I could have done better?

Kelli (13:20) And what was his reason?

Dave (13:21) He simply replied, Dave, it's just time for me to leave. At that point, I realized that he had achieved his goals here. I didn't even try to counter it was clear it was just time for him to leave.

Kelli (13:38) He was ready to go. 

Dave (13:39) It was the best decision for him and we remain great friends and colleagues to this very day. And he still occasionally reminds me of the impact that I had on him and that really makes me feel good.

Kelli (13:52) Sure.

Dave (13:52) So what can we learn from this kind of rhetorical question there?

Kelli (13:57) I think we can break down sudden resignations of good employees now into two categories. Number one, those like in Dave's story where it's just time for them to leave.

Dave (14:07) And two, those times where you, as an employer, owner or leader, abandon them, the employees, due to lack of investment into your current workforce day to day health and happiness.

Kelli (14:23) Number one, we can't and shouldn't try to fix it. Instead, we should just help them celebrate.

Dave (14:29) Yes. Have a big party, wish them well, and don't burn any bridges. They're not burning any bridges. Everybody goes along happy, right? Number two, however, we better fix it, it’s a silent killer of employee morale. It's behind the scenes and it will cunningly take out the good employees right before your very eyes.

Kelli (14:51) Good employees won't complain. They'll just do their jobs well. That's why they're good. They won't rattle sabers, they don't participate in water cooler bitch sessions, and they have ethics that they hold close and won't allow them to compromise their professionalism or burn unnecessary bridges.

Dave (15:09) They're quiet and carefully weighing the pros and cons as they look for another job. And when they find that job, they actually commit to taking it. They're really not out there trying to say, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go out there and I'm going to get another job or an offer. I'm going to come back and see if they'll counter me.

Kelli (15:27) Right.

Dave (15:27) Because I really want to see it. That's not them.

Kelli (15:30) They've already thought it all through and they're done. You'll ask what's wrong? Why can’t I stop you? And they're going to say.

Dave (15:37) No, hey, at this point, you may even ask them what's wrong. They're not going to tell you. They're going to be complimentary to you and the company. They won't tell you the defective parts of the environment that let them down. No, they don't have to, right?

Kelli (15:52) No. And they don't want to.

Dave (15:53) They want a clean exit. No burnt bridges, no hard feelings. And guess what? You learned nothing as an employer from this process.

Kelli (16:04) But it should be a clue for you to dig deeper. On the other hand, some employees will complain and they'll be more vocal. And often as leaders, we look at them and dismiss them as whiners.

Dave (16:15) Yeah, they're just the troublemakers sometimes. Like the noisy wheel. Yeah, right. Does a good job, but boy, I wish he'd keep his mouth shut type thing. That's a bad attitude as an employer to have.

Kelli (16:28) Don't fall into this trap. You need to listen to them. They're your canaries in the coal mine.

Dave (16:33) Okay, on to answers. What can you do as an HR team, as the Department leader or the owner to ensure that you have the least number of surprise sudden resignations in this new world going forward?

Kelli (16:47) Invest now in a program we call Team Recognizance and Reward. Team R&R is a program that helps to rebalance the company's investment in the workforce. The concept is to invest as much or more into continuous recruitment of the current team, just as you do in recruiting new employees.

Dave (17:06) As we said earlier, in the vast majority of companies we see today, there is a lot of investment going into the recruitment of new employees and a concerning lack of investment in keeping the current team motivated to the point where we actually did use the term abandonment because employees are feeling abandoned.

Kelli (17:24) Yes. And if you're having an AHA moment right now, good, we're happy. We're happy you're saying to yourself, Wait, how did I literally forget about this so easily?

Dave (17:34) Or saying, Am I sure HR is really effective in this area? And if you're a leader of a Department saying, Wait, I can see how this is affecting me and my team. Well, you're not alone.

Kelli (17:47) We've all been so crazy busy with just keeping things going the past couple of years. But if you're not investing in your current team, you're fostering and promoting the great resignation.

Dave (17:58) Team R and R have some basic premises. We'll go over them quickly, and you can enact your own version of this and make it more specific to your needs. But here are some covenants. The first R in Team R and R is reconnaissance. You have to uncover the hidden problem areas that you need to invest or reinvest in to make it better. They include, as we mentioned earlier, continuous employee review programs that encourage sessions where employees can brainstorm about their ideas with leadership.

Kelli (18:32) Create an operating committee.

Dave (18:33) What’s an operating committee?

Kelli (18:35) Where the majority of that team are not leadership, but the rank and file employees and give the operating committee business challenges to solve.

Dave (18:43) Yeah, I've used that effectively when I was trying to fix a broken customer service program. Recently, instead of asking customer service leadership to make the changes, I went to the source of the problem and gave them carte blanche. Them being the operating committee made up of, and I use the term rank and file, but what I mean is the valued team members that aren't in leadership positions. Right. I gave them the carte Blanche to blow it up. Blow it up, come up with a whole new way. They were the ones that knew what the trouble was and leadership sat in but didn't interfere. That's the concept of the operating committee. And it really worked well. And the team then felt invested in the fix and its ultimate success. We were actually, by doing the operating committee, we were investing into the current employee pool.

Kelli (19:31) You bet. And letting them have a voice.

Dave (19:34) Right.

Kelli (19:34) Letting them have their opinion, giving them a little bit more responsibility. See how it all comes around, right?

Dave (19:40) Exactly.

Kelli (19:40) Comes full circle.

Dave (19:41) Pro tip. Some of your smartest people with the best ideas in your company are not on your leadership team.

Kelli (19:49) Go find them! More on reconnaissance - If you ever say the words like, I hope she doesn't leave us, you already have a gap in your relationship with that person.

Dave (19:59) You bet.

Kelli (20:00) Go fix it now before it's too late.

Dave (20:02) Here's another good idea that works very well. Have a quarterly anonymous comment program. This program only asks one question to every employee. The same question each quarter.

Kelli (20:17) What is it?

Dave (20:18) That may sound boring.

Kelli (20:20) It doesn’t.  Let’s hear it.

Dave (20:20) The question is if you could change one thing about your job, what would it be, Kelli?

Kelli (20:27) Only one at a time. You have to wait till next quarter for that other thing.

Dave (20:34) Exactly. What you're trying to do is you're trying to find patterns. You're trying to pick apart what the defective parts of your organization are that you may not know about. Do not try to do surveys.

Kelli (20:46) Yeah, everybody's survey fatigued, and they don't want them, Just ask that one question once a quarter and look for patterns. You'll find the big elephants in the room and people will participate because you've proven it's anonymous.

Dave (20:59) And when you do that and you make everybody feel comfortable, when you ask that one question once per quarter, you will get the majority of your staff to reply and feed you back. Excellent intelligence. It's one of the best reconnaissance programs I know of.

Kelli (21:16) I like it. And another thing is, if you have something that the employees know happens once a quarter and you prove that it's anonymous, just by history, nobody has come back and said, hey, I know that was you. Yeah, I got caught and I know you're the one complaining about XY or Z. Then it will make them feel confident that they can go ahead and be honest and open and there aren't going to be any repercussions.

Dave (21:41) Another good thing to do, which a lot of places don't do or don't do well, are exit interviews, and they can be a little bit uncomfortable. And that's why I don't think that you should do them as an organization. Hire a consultant or an outside agency to do these. You'll get much better reconnaissance.

Kelli (21:58) That makes sense.

Dave (21:59) There's a bunch more that you can do, but you get the picture.

Kelli (22:02) The second R in Team R and R is reward. During recruitment of new hires, we're all quick to offer sign-on bonuses. But what about all the loyal employees who dig you out of trouble every day? You need to reward them, too, and it doesn't always need to be in the form of money. Reward is often best served on a visual canvas. Pictures of employees that are doing great things with some short stories about them.

Dave (22:26) Right.

Kelli (22:26) As part of your website.

Dave (22:28) Yeah, that's a great idea.

Kelli (22:29) It may be a little hard to keep up with that, but it's harder and more expensive to lose those employees.

Dave (22:35) Everybody likes their 15 minutes of Fame.

Kelli (22:37) You bet you.

Dave (22:38) Companywide programs that encourage everyone to be involved are another great idea. In the reward category, I once did a program called Keys to Success where every employee was given a six inch round key ring and they kept it by their workspace. Today, you could do that virtually if you needed to, but everyone was able to earn gold keys for various goals, accolades, Pats on the back, going the extra distance.

Kelli (23:05) And who gave the keys? Was it leadership? Everybody okay.

Dave (23:09) Yes. An employee could give another employee a key. Leadership gave employees keys. Employees gave leadership keys. Everybody had the opportunity to participate in the Keys to Success program, and the amount of keys varied by the Kudo offered. I remember everyone proudly hanging the key ring full of growing amounts of gold keys through the year. What was the reward? Well, it's visual recognition. It's a little healthy competition, a lot of pride. And at the end of the year, the gold keys had value and they could be converted into something tangible from a special company success store. It really did work.

Kelli (23:52) That sounds great. I actually was involved in a very similar program that me and my coworker developed, and it was with stars. We had a bulletin board with blank stars. When you saw somebody doing something great or somebody went above and beyond, you could write something out on a star, plop it onto the bulletin board. Same concept. After you receive so many positive stars, you could trade them in for a reward.

Dave (24:19) Oh, that's really cool, too. The bottom line here is do something. Get involved with your current employees and make sure that they know that they're appreciated and make sure that you put them in their 15 minutes of Fame every once in a while and then a few more quick ones. Lunch with the C suite. Yeah, it sounds corny, but how often does somebody get to sit with the CEO or COO or other top leadership and just chat for a little while? Pretty cool.

Kelli (24:46) Here's another one. Contribute to employee's Passions. Match donations to their favorite causes. Give time off and reward with pay for employee volunteering.

Dave (24:56) And just like the prior conversation where we talked about the reconnaissance ideas, there's a bunch more in the reward category that you'll think of and make it relate to your unique situation.

Kelli (25:07) Team R&R, Team reconnaissance and reward, is a concept and a process to help you solidify your investment in your current workforce and help make it meaningful.

Dave (25:17) And measurable, if good employees are leaving your organization and this is too often a surprise to you, it is most surely an internal and widespread company problem that may be hiding in plain sight from you as a leader.

Kelli (25:38) Don't call me Shirley.

Dave (25:42) The number of Copyright problems that we're going to have with this thing.

Kelli (25:49) Too often companies disproportionately invest more in recruitment of new talent than it does in retention of current, trained, loyal talent. The mistake here is thinking that all is good in the hood or under the hood.

Dave (26:06) Good employees suddenly leave for only one of two reasons. Number one, it's simply the right time for them to leave. Celebrate it.

Kelli (26:15) Yay.

Dave (26:16) And two, they tolerated a workplace that is not fulfilling to the point where they had to leave. Fix it. Should I stay? One, two, three. Should I stay or should I go? It's terrible. Thank you all very much for listening today.

Kelli (26:36)  If you like our podcast, please tell a friend about us. Just one friend or colleague. Just ignore Dave singing in the background, someone who you think would enjoy the content and stories we share. You can listen to My Job Here Is Done anywhere and everywhere podcasts are available.

Dave (26:55) And check out our website for all the latest info on the show and how you can work with us at myjobhereisdone.com.

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