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Signs to find someone is about to quit

May 6,2019

Despite the area of speculation by managers and scholars, we know very little about whether certain hints or signs exhibited by employees can predict whether they’re about to resign. To understand how tells might play out in the workplace, we first inquired to identify a large set of behavioral changes employees show that signal their future turnover. We examined nearly 100 managers to answer the following question: Think for a moment of the peers and subordinates who have deliberately quit your organization in the last two years. How was their response unusual in the months prior quitting that might have told you when they were on their way out? We also examined 100 employees to describe their own changes in response before leaving a previous job. These inquiries produced over 900 different pre-quitting behaviors. The survey respondents summarized relatively odd behavioral changes (e.g., “stopped bothering about their personal appearance;” “became aggressive toward other workers”) as well as many common ones (e.g., “less willingness to join for special projects;” “decreased attendance at staff meetings”).

The pre-quitting behaviors that made the cut are below:

1.    Their work productivity has declined more than usual.

2.    They have acted less like a team player than normal.

3.    They have been doing the least amount of work more frequently than normal.

4.    They have been less interested in satisfying their manager than usual.

5.    They have been less willing to act to long-term timelines than usual.

6.    They have displayed a negative change in attitude.

7.    They have displayed less effort and work motivation than usual.

8.    They have displayed less focus on job related matters than usual.

9.    They have expressed discontent with their current job more frequently than usual.

10.  They have expressed displeasure with their supervisor more frequently than usual.

11.  They have left early from work more regularly than usual.

12.  They have lost interest for the mission of the organization.

13.  They have shown less enthusiasm in working with customers than usual.

For managers, our opinion is to focus on retaining star employees in the short-term. Typically, organizations manage a turnover problem with large scale interventions to improve departmental or firm-level engagement, job satisfaction, and job commitment. These strategies may work, but they take time to devise and implement. Thinking in terms of the turnover risk of specific employees allows you to invest your time and resources into those employees who create the maximum value and are actually at risk of leaving.

There are many ways to invest in employees you fear may be looking: pay increments, promotions, special programs, etc.  One technique is to use what is called “stay interviews.”  Instead of conducting only exit interviews to learn what made good employees to quit, hold routine one-on-one interviews with current high-performing employees to determine what keeps them working in your organization and what could be changed to keep them from straying.

It’s also worth noting that employees in the middle of leaving often take customers or exclusive product information with them. And as most of us know, a quick departure can leave a hole in company operations that creates long term impairment. While it’s important to realize that there is no surity that employees showing pre-quitting behaviors will surely leave, those identified as flight risks should be monitored for unsavory behavior. Succession planning for their departure may restrict damages arising from unexpected quits.

And if you’re in the market for a fresh job? Hiding your own pre-quitting behaviors may prove difficult. Given the negative consequences of turnover, know that your managers and peers are likely watching for obvious and subtle changes in response—and that no single action is a dead giveaway. Instead, patterns of response over time that may seem subtle to you might tip off your boss. We suggest that you stay involved with your work, continue to show enthusiasm for the mission of the organization, and project a consistent level of relational spirit to the members of your work team.

The basic tenet of maintaining turnover is that everyone eventually leaves. But the “when” can feel alike a mystery. While our research shouldn’t be considered the exclusive way to identify an employee on the verge of quitting, it does denote to a set of behaviors that, taken together, can provide a clue—and it decreases behaviors that have mistakenly been seen as tells. So the next point you have an inkling about whether someone is about to leave, know that you may be onto something when you take the right signs into account. As Dolly Parton sang, “Though you haven’t left me yet, I know you’re just as good as gone.”

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