Why people leave organisations - Part 1

According to local research the rate of voluntary labour turnover in Zimbabwe has been hovering around 1% for most industries during the past two decades or so. This is mainly due to the economic hardships in the country which limit staff mobility simply because alternative employment options are non-existent for most staff. Under such circumstances the necessity for organizations to develop robust staff retention strategies has ceased to be a key strategic issue.

However, as Zimbabwe re-engages with the international community as part of the unfolding economic dispensation and more investment opportunities materialize it is important to remind HR practitioners that one of the key roles that they should play is to help their organizations to attract and retain talented people. This function becomes even more critical and challenging to the extent that in future employees will have more career options in a “normal” business environment.

In order to help organizations to plan for the future business challenges associated with operating in a “normal” and competitive environment we need to highlight the most common reasons why employees leave organizations which should guide the business HR Agenda for the future:

  1. Career development – when individuals join organizations, they somehow anticipate to grow professionally in their fields and develop certain skills which can enable them to rise through the ranks. In other words, they expect that someday they can be at the top of the Departments of business units that they will be stationed at. Therefore, this raises expectations in individual employees about their advancement in the respective job spheres. If no chances show, they opt to leave the organization to find a better one where they can advance their career.
  2. Lack of interest due to lack of appreciation or recognition – An employee feels greatly demotivated and discouraged when the Manager shows a lack of interest in the work that he/she is doing. This means that if employees put in a great deal of effort in their work to come up with new ideas or plans at work; they expect some form of recognition. This recognition can have a great positive impact on an employee’s attitude towards the company. For example, an employee stays late at work to work on something needed by the Manager the following morning. A simple thank you can greatly uphold the employee’s spirits and to be motivated to work harder in future.
  3. Job content change – due to globalization and advancement in technology, some job contents are increasingly changing or becoming more complicated whilst other jobs are being rendered obsolete. This implies that with globalization, some job roles are changing radically and, in some instances, they are being reconfigured in terms of task variety and complexity. For example, Billing Clerks in organizations who used to do manual billing which can now be done by a system such as Pastel. This leaves the Clerks with less to do. Technological changes can also increase the complexity of job tasks. If employees are not well versed or trained in that field they may fail to cope, and this can lead them to quit their jobs.
  4. Inexperience – inexperience coupled with pressure of work can make an employee leave an organization as a result of failure to deliver quality. When employees are inexperienced and at the same time quality results are being expected they may fail to deliver or they do deliver poor quality work. Pressure can mount on them to leave the organization unless if there are structured training and development programmes to help employees to acquire the relevant job skills and knowledge.
  5. Sexual harassment/Quid pro quo based environments – some employees leave certain organizations for the fact that the work environment will be characterized by sexual favours or offers, which is known as quid quo pro meaning a favour for a favour. This situation reduces victims to nothing but sexual objects and has a dehumanizing effect on the individual. This takes away the professional value of the employee in an organization and sends the message that the employee has nothing else to offer other than sex and any sexual favours. The prevalence of sexual harassment in an organization requires some robust strategies to deal with the phenomenon.
  6. Horrible bosses –This is associated with bosses who treat their employees in a harsh and inconsiderate manner. Such bosses can also be very rude. For example, imagine a boss who tells their employees that no one will go home until they finish loads of work where there is no justified deadline for the work to be completed. Rather than giving employees some form of responsible autonomy for them to work, some bosses end up exhibiting or portraying horrible and abusive behaviours to their employees and this can force employees to leave organizations.
  7. Consideration of daily hustles and stress – daily hustles that individual employees go through can also cause employees to leave an organization on their part. This means that if individuals are stressed more often by daily hustles that they go through which include transportation to work or pressure of work; they may decide to quit their jobs so as to save themselves from these ever-occurring events. This is usually common amongst older employees who mostly have difficulties in adjusting or coping with such stressful events.
  8. Better job offers – an employee can leave an organization for the reason of having found a better job offers. This entails better working conditions which include better work schedules, better salary and benefits among other aspects. The favourability or unfavourable nature of working conditions is mainly attributed to HR structures that exist in an organization. For example, some organizations still maintain traditional HR practices are becoming incompatible with modern management thinking and hence employees will look for those organizations that have flexible HR concepts which tend to bring out the best in individual employees.

Our prognosis is that if organizations believe that “people are the most important resources in business”, it is vitally critical that they invest a lot of energy into understanding why employees leave organizations and develop appropriate retention strategies.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. tel: 263 773004143 or 263 4 772778