Want To Keep Your Team Happy? Talk To The People Who Just Quit

April 15, 2014


www.fastcompany.com | Jessica Amortegui

As Jessica Amortegui writes, “Employees contemplate daily whether to re-up with their current employer or entertain the prospect of landing a better gig. Given this, the real question is not how to engage your employees so they don’t leave–there is a good chance they will. The real opportunity is how you treat them when they do.”

According to research by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, “people will judge their overall experience by its peak, or most intense point, and by its end. When we file the experience into our memory, we don’t do simple arithmetic to average our moment-to-moment experiences.” With this in mind, Amortegui offers three tips for a better off-boarding strategy:

1. DON’T RESIST THE “GRASS IS GREENER OVER THERE” SYNDROME

“Why not let the star employee go? If you know the inevitable realities of inflated expectations, you also know that your time and energy are best spent letting time lapse before you try to lure him or her back.”

2. KINDLE MEANINGFUL MEMORIES

“If you want an employee to walk out the door engaged, what better way than to celebrate the progress they made in their tenure? It’s never too late–nor can you ever do too much–to make somebody feel like their work matters.”

3. MEASURE HOW MANY EMPLOYEES RETURN

“While engaged employees may not stay, if you manage the relationship correctly, there is a good chance they will stay open to coming back. Which means your new retention measure must do more than capture voluntary turnover. It must also capture the number of boomerangs you capture.”

Jessica Amortegui works in leadership development for VMWare. She is currently pursuing her master’s in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.