# 1 Reason Employees Stay or Quit

" I either like my boss, or I don't." That's the #1 reason employees stay in a job or quit.

In employee exit surveys, the most common reason an employee voluntarily left their job was stated as "disliked my supervisor." Upper management often assumes the key reasons for turnover are pay and benefits; however pay and benefits are typically the third and fourth reasons down the list.

Depending on the industry, especially retail, manufacturing or customer service, the schedule and work hours (nights, weekends, second shift) are commonly the secondary factor for turnover. Occasionally, in a toxic environment, "dislike my co-workers" is reported as high on the list, but again, usually behind the reason "disliked my boss." Rarely does just one reason influence an employee to leave voluntarily. There are often multiple reasons with differing levels of impact on the decision to leave.

Okay, so what's the takeaway from this? The need and most successful strategy and tactic is to improve the quality of supervision. That is easier said than done, but it is more cost effective than trying to throw buckets of money at people to get them to stay.

There are some people in supervision and management that just shouldn't be in those roles. If they are not coachable (fixable), they need to go elsewhere to inflict their pain on employees or get out of a management role at their current company and return to a role of individual contributor.

If you are a supervisor, manager, director, or executive, have you ever thought about what it is like to work for you? Is it painful, neutral, or pleasurable? As I have stated in another post, most people are motivated to make a change to either escape pain or run toward pleasure.

I will write other posts on what it takes to really improve the quality of supervision in a cost effective and timely manner.

My goal is to "help people learn to live a truly blessed life." It's hard to feel you have "blessed life" if you are miserable at your job, especially because of a rotten supervisor. I welcome and value your feedback by commenting on the content of this posts. Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. They fall into the four major categories of: 1) Spiritual Law, 2) Christian Principles, 3) Servant Leadership, and 4) Life Lessons.