Podcast EP 126 | Hidden Reasons Why Employees Leave their Jobs

What hap­pens when man­agers tell you peo­ple are leav­ing for more money?

As a leader, your direct reports will tell you that a team mem­ber of theirs has left for more mon­ey. The prob­lem is that it’s an easy excuse that actu­al­ly leads to nev­er fix­ing attri­tion issues. Instead, what if you didn’t accept that answer and asked them for the real answer?

In this episode, Brad Giles and I dis­cuss ​“The Sev­en Hid­den Rea­sons Employ­ees Leave”, a book by Leigh Bran­ham about why peo­ple leave jobs, and how you can use these insights to devel­op a bet­ter oper­a­tional culture.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:13

Wel­come to the Growth Whis­pers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Why? Well, we just kind of like it. We like see­ing com­pa­nies that build decade after decade and dom­i­nate their spaces and become just awe­some com­pa­nies on the plan­et. I’m Kevin Lawrence here in peach land, British Colum­bia. And I’m here with Brad Giles my loy­al, awe­some part­ner here, down in Perth, Aus­tralia, Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles 00:45

Love­ly, very, very good. How are you Kev?

Kevin Lawrence 00:48

That’s good. As usu­al, like life is good. Life is grand. Busi­ness­es good. Yeah, I’m hap­py to be here. We always get some great think­ing when we put these pod­casts togeth­er. So what’s the word of the day?

Brad Giles 01:04

It’s, it’s filthy. It’s no, no, it’s not the word filthy. It’s a dis­gust­ing, filthy thing that I learned about on the week­end. And it’s just, it’s just repul­sive. So, oh, this

Kevin Lawrence 01:19

is gonna be good.

Brad Giles 01:21

I came across this con­cept called over work­ers, right, there’s a Red­dit forum called over­work­ing. And it’s remote work­ers who are hold­ing down mul­ti­ple jobs and lying to their employ­ers, that they’re only work­ing for them. So they’ve got, for exam­ple, they could be a soft­ware engi­neer, and they’ve got a com­put­er for job a, well, they call it J one, Job one, they’ve got anoth­er com­put­er for j two. And some of them have got eight or nine full time jobs. So you think about what’s the full time salary mul­ti­plied by eight or nine. And there’s this whole com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple that are giv­ing each oth­er tips and tricks on how to get around hir­ing, and KPIs and account­abil­i­ty, and all of this stuff, and it’s filthy and dis­gust­ing. I’m sor­ry, if I’m upset your day. But yeah, it real­ly, real­ly affect­ed me when I read it. Thank you, for allow­ing me to vent.

Kevin Lawrence 02:31

I think I had some­one that did that. And it was a wild expe­ri­ence. That is incred­i­ble. Peo­ple are very cre­ative. That will the peo­ple who want every­one in the office that’ll cat­alyze them more to do it, although you prob­a­bly could do it in the office too, if you real­ly were clever, and have one remote job and one fixed job any­way, that’s a whole oth­er thing. That’s an incred­i­ble. My, my word of the day is adven­ture. And, you know, doing a lot of I lis­ten to audio­books rather than read­ing. But, you know, as we were doing this great road trip through Cal­i­for­nia, and check­ing on all kinds of dif­fer­ent places, and dif­fer­ent good and dif­fer­ent bad in some cas­es, but just how it opens up your mind to new things, just see­ing and hav­ing dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences makes you think dif­fer­ent­ly. And that’s what I love. And from, you know, the worst restau­rant that I went to, we went to just this lit­tle place on the ocean that was hor­rif­ic, actu­al­ly. Just hor­ri­ble. To the bass, but you just get to see like peo­ple have a good intent peo­ple don’t intend to do poor­ly. But for what­ev­er rea­son, some­times that they just do. And in this place, I can just see this, that’s just how they do things, right. So but adven­ture opens up your mind, you get dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and dif­fer­ent ideas and dif­fer­ent angles. You know, some of the con­ver­sa­tions that we had with peo­ple like the stranger, we were in a place just down by New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, in this lit­tle restau­rant that was rec­om­mend­ed by one of the clients work with down there and lit­tle Ital­ian place at a night real­ly nice din­ner. But the guy across the street was across the table, who was super chat­ty winds up hav­ing din­ner chat­ting with a table beside us. And when he talked about what he was doing, he was a rock band and he’s a drum­mer for a whole bunch of the bands that we would know he was like a free­lance drum­mer talk­ing about his life, but just the adven­ture and the peo­ple you meet in open­ing it up. So what was your word again, Brad, it was a dirty, dirty, dirty inventor.

Brad Giles 04:44

Not it was over workers.

Kevin Lawrence 04:46

Over work­ers. It was dirty con­tent over work­ers and adven­tures, you know, you know, you prob­a­bly could do if you just did a whole bunch of over­work­ing and pre­tend­ed to work. You prob­a­bly could have some adven­tures, although I would­n’t be able to live with myself off if I was doing its ethics, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. It’s like come on, like we have one of our core val­ues in our firm is to do what you say. And then some, you make a com­mand­ment, you deliv­er it and ide­al­ly do a lit­tle bit more. Which is not some­thing that’s true for those who do.

Brad Giles 05:14

You know, very quick­ly, the thing that struck me is all of this stuff that we talk about, from hir­ing, find­ing a play­ers doing inter­views with or ref­er­ence checks with mul­ti­ple employ­ers, KPIs reg­u­lar meet­ings that are struc­tured, smart pri­or­i­ties, all of this stuff that we stick to was the things that the over work­ers were try­ing to not do, or they were like, this is the way that you get caught. And so that was it was kind of reas­sur­ing that if you stick to the recipe, that that we advocate.

Kevin Lawrence 05:58

That there’s not room for that, there’s not very var­ied and also our man­ag­er, who’s I mean, obvi­ous­ly, those peo­ple’s man­agers are absent to some degree. That does­n’t mean what the I mean, the man­age­ment issue should pick that up unless they’re in on the scam too. Which could, which could be hap­pen­ing. Anoth­er inter­est­ing thing that I’ve seen was when in same thing is there’s shys­ters every­where. Yeah. You know, one hotel, we stayed out in Cal­i­for­nia, I won’t name it out of respect for it. But it had a 4.2 rat­ing for like a mid mar­ket Hotel. 4.2 was quite a good rat­ing for hotel on Expe­dia. It should have had about a 2.2. Yeah, to the point where we booked two nights, at the end of the first night, we’re in the office to oth­er peo­ple had issues that they were try­ing to deal with, as well as a small bou­tique hotel by the beach. We’re like, we need our mon­ey back. And we need to go some­where else. We can­not stay out again. Yeah. And that’s, that’s nev­er hap­pened in my life. But the worst part about it is, is that it had an excel­lent rat­ing and good reviews. Once you stepped into place. It was impos­si­ble for that to be true. Impos­si­ble and have a there was a 12 or 14 room place. Three of us had issues. You know, and it’s just, it’s there’s always some­one who’s got an angle. So we’re not talk­ing about shys­ters today, we could do a whole episode on the scams that we’ve seen. Only have I seen scams in com­pa­nies like theirs. They’re just every­where. But this is dif­fer­ent. Yeah. Speak. It’s although it is a bit of a scam that we’re try­ing to debunk, which is, you know, when man­agers tell you they’re leav­ing for when some­one’s one of their peo­ple is leav­ing, and they’re leav­ing for more mon­ey. That’s a bit of a that’s a bit of a scam. Because yeah, true. Yeah. Peo­ple, peo­ple, gen­er­al­ly, more than nine, about 90% of the time peo­ple leave for oth­er vari­ables. Now, they might actu­al­ly be get­ting more mon­ey. That’s not why they’re leaving.

Brad Giles 07:57

So I want to paint this sce­nario. Sor­ry, Kevin, I want to paint this sce­nario. So you’re in a meet­ing, you’re the you’re a senior leader. And one of your direct reports comes to you and says, You nev­er believe but Joanne, pick a ran­dom name. Joanne is leav­ing, Joe is she’s she gave me a res­ig­na­tions pret­ty dis­ap­point­ing. And then you say, Oh, no. What, why? And that per­son says she’s been offered more mon­ey. Right? So this is the sce­nario that we’re try­ing to paint for you as a com­mon sce­nario hap­pens all the time.

Kevin Lawrence 08:35

When peo­ple are leav­ing. They com­mon­ly say that because they’re not dumb. And they don’t want to burn a bridge and tell you it’s because you’re a jerk as their manager.

Brad Giles 08:47

And that’s what we’re try­ing to call out. And what we’re try­ing to say it’s so sim­ple and easy. And it’s like that old chest­nut again just imag­ine if we paid 20% high­er we would­n’t have any of these prob­lems might not be true not true at all.

Kevin Lawrence 09:09

No peo­ple would be hap­py for a cou­ple of weeks but then the fun­da­men­tal issues are still there. It’s inter­est­ing. So there will share some research lat­er on but I I have a habit now because by the way the peo­ple that care that we leave that we care about are A‑players by the way if the peo­ple that you missed hard­ly think were ill they save us the headache and they can save face and move on so if they’re low per­form­ers that leave fine we’re not talk­ing about that that they’re help­ing us to fix our mis­takes and go find a place where they’ll prob­a­bly be hap­pi­er and per­form bet­ter we’re talk­ing about your awe­some peo­ple leave we call A play­ers. Collins would say that there are peo­ple that are lev­el five lead­ers have their lead­ers just awe­some peo­ple and so it’s that’s what we’re look­ing for. But so basi­cal­ly my curios­i­ty since I’ve read research around it and got sick of hear­ing that excuse I ask every new exec­u­tive that comes and joins us from some­where else. When I get a chance, I ask why I just did it. Today is Mon­day, I did it on Thurs­day with a new exec­u­tive. And I’ll tell you about that one in a sec­ond. And when peo­ple leave, if I have a chance I ask, or we do prop­er exit inter­views. Now, depend­ing on your HR team, they may or may not be good at get­ting the truth. Peo­ple are often guard­ed. If it’s a senior exec, we often have one of the team, one of our firm, one of our con­sul­tants do it, or some­times some real­ly good HR teams can’t have some­one who’s good at extract­ing the truth. Either way, we want to get the real deal of why they left so we can learn because these are high per­form­ers. These aren’t the low per­form­ers. So as an exec­u­tive, I talked to you the oth­er day. And I’ll keep it gener­ic just because I did­n’t ask her per­mis­sion to share it. But it’s gener­ic. But this is an incred­i­ble A‑player exec­u­tive that has the expe­ri­ence you would dream of. He made a mas­sive relo­ca­tion, mas­sive relo­ca­tion to a place he nev­er want­ed to choose to live. I had the chance to have a good con­ver­sa­tion about this. And I said, So what’s the deal? Because well, the recruiter called and they said a few things. And they got my inter­est. And then, you know, the CEO, and I had a con­ver­sa­tion that went quite well. And I went home and told my wife, this is kind of inter­est­ing. And then the CEO, and I talked every cou­ple of weeks now this CEO is excel­lent at recruit­ment, and he’s an awe­some guy. So he should be. I said, okay, yeah, but why did you con­sid­er leav­ing your exist­ing gig? So he told me about the sales process? Almost always good. But why did you leave? Oh, I was bored out of my mind.

Brad Giles 11:56

Because it was­n’t more money.

Kevin Lawrence 11:58

No, actu­al­ly, I did­n’t ask him. But I would­n’t be sur­prised if he got paid less. He might have got paid the same.

Brad Giles 12:04

No, my ques­tion is the course.

Kevin Lawrence 12:08

Nev­er the truth. I’ve nev­er heard that primer. Exact­ly. No, I’ve nev­er heard it from an exec­u­tive that comes in joins us and even the ones that leave it’s I don’t recall hear­ing that in a long, long, long time. It’s always some­thing else when you dig. And so as I was telling you about the board was well, I’m used to being in a real­ly dynam­ic, chal­leng­ing com­pa­ny. The job was pret­ty basic. I did­n’t have to work that hard. And it was bor­ing. It was. So that was one thing, it was­n’t that engag­ing or chal­leng­ing. I was kind of lack­lus­ter. Sec­ond­ly, although I was get­ting paid well. Sec­ond­ly, he said, this was an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to take all my expe­ri­ence in my career to a com­pa­ny that’s ear­li­er in its growth curve, and to apply it and make some­thing excit­ing and to kind of make what I’ve always want­ed to make. Yeah, so it was excit­ing. And growth. And by the way, the last thing he said, and if he’s lis­ten­ing to this, or peo­ple in the room are lis­ten­ing, they will remem­ber this moment he goes, and at the end of the day, if you get offered a ride on a rock­et ship, you say yes. And this com­pa­ny that I’m work­ing with is like a rock­et ship. So it was excit­ing ver­sus bor­ing. He was chal­leng­ing ver­sus bor­ing. And in many ways the vision is and what’s going on in the com­pa­ny is rock­et ship, like and he’s there and all in and he’s awesome.

Brad Giles 13:37

So many things com­ing out of that. First of all, if I go back 20,30 years ago, when I was an employ­ee, I remem­ber peo­ple would say that a pay rise only lasts a week.

Kevin Lawrence 13:48

I’ve heard this too. Yeah.

Brad Giles 13:51

So you go you get frus­trat­ed, you get your you know, your cov­er­age up and you go in there as an employ­ee, and then you say, Okay, I want to get a pay rise, how much nego­ti­ate, some­thing comes out, and then you feel okay, that’s good. And then you go away, and you get your next pay pack­et. But all of the prob­lems that drew your frus­tra­tion are still there. And, and so the prob­lem has­n’t real­ly been resolved. You’ve you know, you’ve just upset your boss or got a lit­tle bit more pain.

Kevin Lawrence 14:23

You just a lit­tle sweet­en­er on the deal, but it’s still crap. It was inter­est­ing talk­ing to my son who’s 19 now and some of his friends and one of his one of the peo­ple in his life was talk­ing about how they left one loca­tion of a restau­rant and went to anoth­er same same same chain. And they said, basi­cal­ly, this oth­er place I know the man­ag­er is awe­some. In a place I’m at, the man­ag­er, she is not nice. There was a death in her fam­i­ly and there was they were not being sym­pa­thet­ic and sup­port­ive at all, and just not han­dling peo­ple well. It was a hor­rif­ic man­ag­er mak­ing a semi tox­ic envi­ron­ment. So they left the same chain restau­rant and went to a dif­fer­ent loca­tion because of a bet­ter man­ag­er. Now, I said, and what did you tell your man­ag­er when you left? Actu­al­ly, I for­get what it was. But what she said clear­ly, she sure as heck did­n’t say because the man­ag­er was an idiot. She go, and she said, and this is 19 or 18 year old girl. I don’t want to burn my bridges. So it gets me was it’s not safe to tell the truth. Now, she did say she might go back after and say it because she was a more of an out­spo­ken type per­son. But we all know we’ve been in those sit­u­a­tions. Yeah, where it’s hard. And you know, and I, you know, I even I had a client. And nor­mal­ly we fil­ter our clients very well, I had a client that I had to stop work­ing with, because I just, I was­n’t enjoy­ing it, it was drain­ing me. And, you know, I told the CEO exact­ly what the deal was. But it was real­ly chal­leng­ing to do it respect­ful­ly. Like it was hard. And it was hard where I left because the team felt like I was aban­don­ing the rest of the team. But I just, I was­n’t enjoy­ing it at all. And I can go back to the rea­sons here, and I’m sure a lot of that kicks in. So there’s, there’s exam­ple after exam­ple, and I’ll just share one more that was, like, I get angry when we lose a play­er’s like, like, rage. And, and I get, I have to be care­ful because they’re not my man­agers, but to not get too upset. At them hire the man­ag­er who was in charge, because it’s almost like a crime in my mind. So we had a woman in a com­pa­ny who was amaz­ing. She was the head of legal, she was an A plus. And she’s one of these peo­ple that nev­er missed a dead­line ever. Like in her career, prob­a­bly with that com­pa­ny. She was like, as good as it gets in that job, you could not find a bet­ter per­son full stop. And she was a moth­er of two chil­dren mar­ried with two kids, and, and essen­tial­ly a per­fec­tion­ist it had every­thing had to be right. And I remem­ber when she left, I had a con­ver­sa­tion with her, I was upset. And I said, what, what hap­pened. And she said, you know, and, you know, qui­et­ly to sim­u­late the real­i­ty Kevin. I men­tioned to my boss, the exec­u­tive I worked for that I could­n’t keep up the pace that it was too much work. I could­n’t do it. And, and through the con­ver­sa­tion, it was like an evening din­ner and a cou­ple drinks and chat­ting, were real­ly what I got out of it was She’s a per­fec­tion­ist a play­er who has to per­form, she knew she could not sus­tain it and still have a fam­i­ly. So she was basi­cal­ly choos­ing between her san­i­ty, or her fam­i­ly or her job, she basi­cal­ly had to quit because she could­n’t there’s no way she could keep up to her expec­ta­tions of her­self. It was impos­si­ble. So she had to quit for her san­i­ty, because she was­n’t gonna let work slip. She was­n’t gonna let her fam­i­ly slip. And she did­n’t want to kill her­self, or destroy her­self, I should say in the process. And the worst part is, she was giv­ing clues to her man­ag­er and her man­ag­er just did­n’t see it. And her man­ag­er is a good guy. But he did­n’t see it and pick up on it and do enough. And so she had to quit.

Brad Giles 18:29

So I want to come back to the ques­tion and alter per­haps an alter­nate view or an offer an ulti­mate view. So what are what to say? What to say when man­agers tell you or your direct reports tell you that their peo­ple are leav­ing for more mon­ey. Okay, so I’ve got a team that I work with, they’re blue col­lar. So they work with trades peo­ple, okay. And in our econ­o­my. We have a min­ing based econ­o­my. And in the regions, let’s say, let’s say, hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters away, or you need to fly to some of these mines. So they’re remote. They make insane prof­its on these mines. And peo­ple get poached from this team for much high­er wages. So lit­er­al­ly these team mem­bers who were trades peo­ple can get offered a job at dou­ble their pay, right? And these peo­ple might be in their 20s and they won’t be able to afford a house to buy a house unless they did some­thing like this. Yeah. So some­times, it’s a more com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion. Okay, some­times because this busi­ness that I’m that I work with, it’s hard like, we can’t offer the same kind of wages for sure. So in the short term, got it in a sit­u­a­tion where some­one can­not feed their fam­i­ly. Right? Like they can­not sur­vive and pay their bills and live.

Kevin Lawrence 20:27

Then yes, peo­ple will go for the mon­ey because it’s sur­vival no dif­fer­ent than this oth­er woman who was doing it for her san­i­ty, there are sit­u­a­tions where they don’t earn enough to live. But here’s the thing I’m gonna ask you and I have con­ver­sa­tions, I have very intense cov­er. Like, Brad lit­er­al­ly. So let’s just say the guy next door has twice the income that you do. Takes twice the vaca­tions has twice the hosts and way nicer cars. Is your wife gonna say see ya brad? I’m gonna go over and you know, set up shop with a guy next door?

Brad Giles 21:09

The fun­ny thing would be to say would be what? Well, that’s actu­al­ly what hap­pened on a tick­et­ed sto­ry. But that’s not what real­ly happened.

Kevin Lawrence 21:27

But but but there are sit­u­a­tions where that does hap­pen. Yeah. But gen­er­al­ly, it’s because the rela­tion­ship isn’t good. There’s pieces about the sit­u­a­tion that aren’t meet­ing peo­ple’s needs. But if you had an amaz­ing rela­tion­ship and a bright future togeth­er, and all kinds of oth­er things, that does­n’t mat­ter what you wave in front of some­one are not going unless it’s about sur­vival, which in that case, it is and that’s why, you know, in the research that Leigh Bran­ham has done in his book, The Sev­en Hid­den Rea­sons Employ­ees Leave, in his research of over 20,000 exit inter­views. 89% of the time peo­ple leave for fac­tors oth­er than mon­ey. Yeah, for sure. 89, that’s at all lev­els in the exec­u­tive and lead­er­ship lev­els that we work with, I would haz­ard that it’s close to 100. Because they’re beyond being able to pay their bills, or they should be at those lev­els, ver­sus the front­line labour­er who can’t feed their family.

Brad Giles 22:33

I agree with that. And there is def­i­nite­ly a line and I 100% under­stand Leigh’s data and agree with it. My point in that sce­nario is, well, we need to fig­ure out a way where mon­ey isn’t an object either, because we need to improve our strategy.

Kevin Lawrence 22:56

Maybe you need to pay prop­er­ly. We do salary sur­veys to make sure that we’re pay­ing in the right quad­rant for the jobs. Like if you’re you know, in my mind, for a lot of the com­pa­nies we work with that kind of to be in the game, you prob­a­bly need to be in about the 50^th per­centile, right, like kind of right in the mid­dle of what the role was.

Brad Giles 23:17

So in that sce­nario, they might be pay­ing 80 to $85,000. And some­one could work in the mines for $190,000. Yeah, right. So it’s and plus they would work sol­id or straight for 14 days.

Kevin Lawrence 23:38

Is this where they go up to the camp and come back that we have the same thing here?

Brad Giles 23:43

Sure.

Kevin Lawrence 23:44

When peo­ple go up to a place in north­ern Fort McMur­ray? Do peo­ple go two weeks? They’re two weeks off? It’s going out of town job. Yeah, peo­ple, you know, young guys go up there and make an absolute killing. Yeah. And as you know it for those that have for a young inde­pen­dent guy, they might not care for peo­ple that have fam­i­lies, it can be a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. Yeah, we have that same dynam­ic here. Yeah, just sell on the oth­er vari­ables that are mean­ing­ful. And there’s always going to be some peo­ple who will do that, though.

Brad Giles 24:17

But my point is that the prin­ci­ple is is still over arch­ing and it just makes us think more deeply about Yes. say­ing no, okay, or say­ing when some­one asks you, such and such as leav­ing, Joanne is leav­ing for more mon­ey. Just don’t accept that primer facie just don’t accept that cor­rect on its mer­its. We want to go and so what’s the real reason?

Kevin Lawrence 24:47

Let’s not assume it’s not the truth so we can get the learn­ing out of it again. Yeah, because going back to their prin­ci­ples of Jim Collins in the win­dow in the mir­ror he talks about is if you say they left for mon­ey, it’s your response to a prob­lem a win­dow response? Oh, it’s because over there some­thing else, hon­est­ly take a look in the mir­ror. Let’s take a look in the mir­ror and see what we can learn from this so we can be bet­ter. And you know, we can improve what there was that indi­vid­ual leader, or it’s us as an organ orga­ni­za­tion, we want to assume that it was­n’t that, and let’s learn and grow.

Brad Giles 25:25

And you know why? Because the com­mon phrase is borne out that peo­ple join com­pa­nies and leave man­agers. So that means that as a man­ag­er act say­ing they left because of more mon­ey is look­ing out the win­dow, and we need to look very convenient.

Kevin Lawrence 25:38

Yeah, it takes the pres­sure off, you might make you feel good. But it ain’t like­ly true. And I have some strong con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple about espe­cial­ly in mar­kets like this. And I haven’t seen the data change in the con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had. And there’s always there’s again, we’ll say that 10% of the time, it could be true, espe­cial­ly at the front lines. Yeah, not so much for. And by the way, I’ve had exec­u­tives, inter­est­ing­ly, one com­pa­ny that was with it, some exec­u­tives that oth­er com­pa­nies bad­ly want­ed and need­ed to hire, they were offer­ing dou­ble the wages to a bunch of these peo­ple. And when they did­n’t take it, I’d ask them why? Well, it was the inverse of the rea­sons why peo­ple nor­mal­ly leave was the rea­sons they would stay. Yeah. And so. So peo­ple are only sus­cep­ti­ble to mon­ey, one if they can­not live. Or if a whole bunch of oth­er emo­tion­al needs aren’t get­ting met by the job, then, or emo­tion­al or just oth­er needs, then, of course, if I’m already think­ing about quit­ting, and you want to offer me 3040 50% More, I’m gonna lis­ten. Yeah, yeah. So let’s go into what Leigh Bran­ham has done his research in his book, and this is one of these books that every­one should read. Not a lot of peo­ple know about the sev­en hid­den rea­sons employ­ees leave. Yeah, maybe I’ll do the first. Yeah, go ahead Brad.

Brad Giles 26:59

Okay, so let’s just start with the data. This is the, like, punch in the gut data. Okay, so 89% of man­agers say that peo­ple leave because they want more mon­ey. In Leigh’s 20,000 exit interviews.

Kevin Lawrence 27:14

89% of man­agers look out the win­dow and blame an exter­nal factor.

Brad Giles 27:18

Yeah. 89%. More mon­ey is more mon­ey. Okay. But then in exit inter­views, employ­ees, 88% of employ­ees say that it’s not mon­ey, but it’s oth­er rea­sons that we’ll dis­cuss in a moment. Okay, so you imag­ine these two pie graphs, we asked the man­agers, and it’s 89% of the man­agers, it’s more mon­ey. The sec­ond para­graph, it looks almost the same. It’s 88% of employ­ees say­ing no, it’s not the mon­ey. Exact­ly. It’s the all these things

Kevin Lawrence 27:53

Yeah, it’s easy for man­agers to believe that because that’s what they’re being told. And it also helps them pre­serve their pride and their ego because they don’t have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty. Yeah, so yeah, let’s dig in. Let’s go through the sev­en here. And it’s you know, and basi­cal­ly, num­ber one, which is pre­ventable, is the job was­n’t what they expect­ed. Like, it was­n’t what they signed up for. So you either did­n’t clear­ly artic­u­late it, or set the right expec­ta­tions for it. But it’s not, you know, they thought this would be an amaz­ing com­pa­ny and amaz­ing cul­ture, and it was dif­fer­ent, or they thought it was casu­al work hours, and it’s intense, or who knows, was­n’t what they expect­ed. Num­ber two, mis­match between job and the per­son. They’re not capa­ble in the role, again, pre­ventable, both of those up front, because that’s some­thing that we could have done in the screen­ing process, is to make sure that they were capa­ble of doing the job.

Brad Giles 28:52

But also, the inverse of that is true, the sto­ry that you told where­by the per­son was bought out of his wits. Yes.

Kevin Lawrence 29:03

Because if they need to be chal­lenged, and it’s a casu­al, repet­i­tive, bor­ing job, yeah. So it does­n’t, you know, if they’re a horse, race horse, you know, there are a pony in the cir­cus. The job is being a pony in the cir­cus are not going to be hap­py. Num­ber, actu­al­ly, we’re on our list. We’re miss­ing it goes 124567. We’re miss­ing num­ber three, and we’ll pull it up. Okay, num­ber three is too lit­tle coach­ing and feed­back. Thank you. And peo­ple always want to know how they’re doing. And high per­form­ers in par­tic­u­lar expect the worst. And espe­cial­ly when they don’t hear it from their man­agers. That’s why per­for­mance reviews get man­dat­ed. That’s why we’d like peo­ple to do at least a quar­ter­ly mini review to keep things going. Then num­ber four, and this one is a killer and it’s a gut punch when it goes wrong, is there’s too few growth and advance­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties peo­ple will say like my man­ag­er is going to be here for the next 20 years, there’s nowhere for me to go. Or what­ev­er it is they can­not see get­ting to the next lev­el or some­one has said you can’t ver­sus hav­ing devel­oped. And this is where devel­op­ment plans are key. And it’s hor­ri­ble when you’re in a com­pa­ny that’s grow­ing 30 or 40% per year. And they can’t see the oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth. They’re every­where. But it seems to be you need to paint by num­ber and show them the path. Yeah, again, devel­op­ment plans are crit­i­cal, crit­i­cal to that. Brad, you want to take over?

Brad Giles 30:30

Yeah, num­ber five is feel­ing deval­ued and unrec­og­nized. So is your employ­ee proud of their com­pa­ny proud of their team, proud of their prod­uct and proud of their man­ag­er, oth­er­wise, they will even­tu­al­ly leave? And so are they val­ued and rec­og­nized? Does their man­ag­er spend one on one time with them? To make sure that they feel like they’re rec­og­nized. And you know, what peo­ple say, in a large com­pa­ny, when they quit, I was just a num­ber. Like, exact­ly, I was just a num­ber. Num­ber six stress from over­work, and work life imbal­ance. Some peo­ple love to work them­selves into the ground and worked over work, let’s say, and oth­er peo­ple don’t, every­one’s got their own mea­sure, but if it’s not work­ing for them, if it’s not work­ing for them, they’re, you know, ulti­mate­ly, they’re going to leave. So we’ve got to make sure that the work is enough to keep them enough to chal­lenge them, but they can still have a life out­side of that, you know, the old Union say­ing was, we want to have three hours of plumb­ing, eight hours for work, eight hours for play, and eight hours for sleep. Yep. And that’s where the eight hour work­day came from. So num­ber sev­en, loss of trust and con­fi­dence in senior lead­ers. So if we don’t trust and have con­fi­dence in the peo­ple that they look up to, that they report to, they’re just gonna think the whole thing is a joke, and they’re gonna, you know, want to work for a decent company.

Kevin Lawrence 32:13

And that’s why you got to deal with your under per­form­ers and things. You know, if you’ve got an under­per­form­ing exec­u­tive or senior leader, and you’re not doing any­thing about it, they’re gonna look at you like you’re an idiot, and lose trust in you, or if there’s so there’s actu­al trust in you in terms of integri­ty trust, there’s a vote, you’re trust­ing your abil­i­ty to deal with things. And then it’s also your abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue to build a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, if they see a whole bunch of things that look like fail­ure, and that you’re not chang­ing it again, peo­ple lose trust. So sev­en basic rea­sons, the thing to real­ly, you know, sum­ma­rize this with is that, hey, just don’t take the sto­ry that peo­ple have for mon­ey, assume that’s not true, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, it’s not like­ly true. assume it’s not true. So you can look in the mir­ror and that man­ag­er who lost the per­son, and your­self was com­ing to learn from it. And so for exam­ple, we just lost an excel­lent senior exec in one of our com­pa­nies. And we engaged some­one to go do a for­mal and exter­nal, do a for­mal exit inter­view. So we can learn every­thing from it. Because you know, los­ing a key exec­u­tive has about a mil­lion dol­lar hit. Right? That’s the cost of find­ing onboard­ing and get­ting them up to speed plus a dis­rup­tion mod­el, you can prob­a­bly account for about a mil­lion bucks for exact pret­ty easy. And that’s assum­ing they’re not get­ting paid a mil­lion bucks. You know, that’s a healthy six fig­ure, not a mil­lion dol­lar a year exec­u­tive. And it’s, it’s we got to learn from not it hap­pens. But we need to absolute­ly learn so we can be better.

Brad Giles 33:42

Yeah, so what do you say when man­agers tell you peo­ple are leav­ing for more mon­ey? Our advice or an idea might be, I should say, an idea might be? So what’s the real rea­son? And then ask them to pick from one of those sev­en rea­sons. So what’s the real reason?

Kevin Lawrence 34:02

And then when you’re want­i­ng to pre­vent and retain peo­ple, look at the inverse of the sev­en rea­sons leave and make it the sev­en rea­sons that peo­ple will stay? Yep. Yeah. Awe­some. Great con­ver­sa­tion. I love this top­ic. And it you know, again, it debunks com­mon myths that peo­ple that we hear about in busi­ness all the time, and it helps us to be better.

Brad Giles 34:23

Okay. So, yeah, as a leader, your direct reports will tell your team mem­bers have left for mon­ey. But the prob­lem is, it’s an easy excuse. And that nev­er leads to real­ly fix­ing the attri­tion issues. Instead, what if you did­n’t accept that answer? And ask them for the real lead? The real answer, par­don me, it will lead to bet­ter oper­a­tional cul­ture. And that’s what we’re talk­ing about today. So, again, we advise and we, we don’t advise, we offer an option for you to say what to say when man­agers are leav­ing your com­pa­ny. Just spin back to What’s the real rea­son. And I’m going to quick­ly go through those seven.

Kevin Lawrence 35:02

So don’t get them to read the book.

Brad Giles 35:03

Yeah even doubt get them to read the book quick review those those those sev­en things again. Now one: job or work­place was not as expect­ed, num­ber two: the mis­match between job and per­son, three: too lit­tle coach­ing and feed­back, Four: too few growth and advance­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. Five: feel­ing deval­ued and unrec­og­nized, six: stress from over­work and work life bal­ance, sev­en: loss of trust and con­fi­dence in senior lead­ers. Good chat today Kev. I hope that you all enjoyed today’s episode. For the video ver­sion, go to YouTube and search for the growth whis­per­ers. Kevin and his firm Lawrence and Co put out a very inter­est­ing newslet­ter every week that you may wish to sub­scribe to that you can add his web­site and of course I’ve got a newslet­ter as well. You can find my newslet­ter at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com and you obvi­ous­ly if you can hit Sub­scribe on your pod­casts or on YouTube. We’d love to have a reg­u­lar chat with you if they enjoyed today’s episode, and we look for­ward to chat­ting to you again next week. Have a great week.