Here’s Why So Many Good Employees Are Looking to Leave This Year

According to a recent study by CareerBuilder, 1 out of every 5 workers is planning to leave their job in 2014.

That’s a lot of disengaged employees.

After digging into the data, you find it’s not because these workers want a higher salary. Even though salary is important and makes up a large percentage (66 percent) of why people said they are dissatisfied with their current job, respondents were just as likely to attribute dissatisfaction to not feeling valued (65 percent).

Why employees are leaving their jobs

When you look at the factors that make people want to leave their job, we should be focused less at big expensive enterprise-wide programs and more at the quality of interactions and communication between managers, supervisors, employees and teams.

Recognition, appreciation, and thanking someone for their contribution is not a million dollar HR program.

In addition to general dissatisfaction, here are the other most frequently cited reasons for leaving a job 2014: –

Job dissatisfaction — 54 percent;
No growth — 45 percent;
Work-life balance — 39 percent;
Underemployed — 39 percent;
Stress — 39 percent;
Don’t like boss — 37 percent.

Ways to mitigate the risk of departures

You can’t give everyone a 50 percent salary raise, but there are many inexpensive ways to mitigate the risk of people leaving:

Recognize. Appreciate. Thank people for their work.
Ask people what’s important to them. Sally may value autonomy and a promotion but Scott would love nothing more than to start his day at 9 am instead of 8 am.
Help people see what their career progression could look like. What skills do they need to develop? What lateral job moves are possible?
Communicate what’s ahead. How does their work fit into the direction or goals of the business?
Understand where and why people are stressed or overloaded. Stress may be the nature of the job but sometimes walking someone through where to delegate or how to re-prioritize can make a significant difference in how they approach their work.
Take a hard look at your managers and supervisors. Great pay, interesting work and a clear career path holds little meaning when you have a horrible boss to deal with every day.

Yes, 20 percent of your employees say they plan to leave their job this year.

Are you giving them a good reason to stay.

This was originally published on PeopleResult’s Current blo