Shiny Happy People Gone Bad (guest post by Beth Carvin)

Avoid this syndrome

Employee turnover is a funny thing, isn’t it? Employees don’t join a company with the intention of leaving. In fact it’s the exact opposite. New employees bring with them a freshness and enthusiasm. They are pure and clean, untainted and full of optimism. Virginal if you will.

But somewhere along the line, something happens. The hope and happiness turns to frustration and despair. Sometimes it happens early on before the employee settles in. Other times it happens later once the initial enthusiasm wears off.

When it happens early on, it’s often blamed on failing to meet the employees’ expectations. Interestingly, that’s not necessarily the case. Early theories suggested that if new hires’ initial expectations were not met then consequently employee turnover would rise. Research into new hire expectations showed something slightly different.  What the academicians found was that positive experiences in the first few weeks were significantly more important than meeting pre-hire expectations. What this means is that even if pre-hire expectations are overly optimistic or even down-right incorrect, the company can still win over the new employees with great onboarding practices.

What about turnover that happens after the employee is settled in? What causes formerly enthusiastic employees to begin scouring the job boards and tapping into their social networks for new opportunities?

In a word, “irritations.”  Irritations are those annoying things that employees experience on a regular basis. They are things which the employees feel powerless to control. They are the aggravations that build up over time until they break the proverbial camel’s back.

The tricky part about irritations is that each company has their own unique irritations and within each company the irritations vary from department to department and job type to job type. It gets even more confusing as irritants also vary between males and females, younger employees and Boomers, newer employees and long service employees. Every employee experiences things a little bit differently than the next and each employee has their own tolerance level for irritations.

So what’s a company to do?

The Human Resources department needs to become the Seeker and Destroyer of irritations. Like a private detective, HR should be constantly on alert for these motivation killers. They should create opportunities for feedback to help uncover new irritations. They should use exit interviews and surveys and electronic suggestion boxes and focus groups and luncheons and management-by-walking-around.

On a regular basis HR should be working with managers and teams and Senior Leaders to minimize the identified irritations.  When the irritations begin to evaporate, employees can comfortably focus on being productive and enjoying their job, company and colleagues. That is when voluntary employee turnover begins to disappear.

High employee turnover doesn’t have to be a given for any industry. When employees have early positive experiences combined with a minimum of irritations, there’s no need for them to seek employment elsewhere. They will be able to maintain much of those early positive feelings they had when they first jumped up-and-down with excitement over the job offer.

For a list of the most common irritations, please email me at bncarvin at nobscot.com

Beth N. Carvin is CEO of Nobscot Corporation, a global technology provider that focuses on key areas of employee retention and development.

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