[nukkad]

["Mahesh chandra gupta" <>]

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Coincidences are spiritual puns. -G.K. Chesterton, essayist and
novelist (1874-1936)
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This is an unusually good piece. Deserves to be read by all.

MC Gupta
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WHY PEOPLE QUIT JOBS

Early this year, Arun, an old friend who is a senior software designer,
 got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India
operations developing a specialized software. He was thrilled by the
 offer. He had heard a lot about the CEO of this company, a charismatic man
often quoted in the business press for his visionary attitude. The salary was
great. The company had all the right systems in place -employee-friendly
human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, the very best
technology, even a canteen that served superb food. Twice Arun was sent
abroad for training. "My learning curve is the sharpest it's ever
been,"  he said soon after he joined. "It's a real high working with such cutting
 edge  technology." 

Last week, less than 20 months after he joined, Arun walked
out of the job. He has no other offer in hand but he said he couldn't
 take it anymore. Nor, apparently, could several other people in his
department who have also quit recently. The CEO is distressed about the high
 employee turnover. He's distressed about the money he's spent in training them.
 He's distressed because he can't figure out what happened. Why did this
 talented employee leave despite a top salary? Arun quit for the same reason that
drives many good people away. 

The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup
Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000
managers and was published in a book called First Break All The Rules.
It came up with this surprising finding: If you're losing good people,
look  to their immediate supervisor. More than any other single reason, he is
the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he's the reason
why they quit, taking their knowledge, experience and contacts with them.
Often, straight to the competition.


"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus
 Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of
keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better
 training when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue." If you have a
turnover problem, look first to your managers. Are they driving people
away? Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money,
and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of this
depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses seem to
happen to good people everywhere.


A Fortune magazine survey some years ago found that nearly 75 per cent
of employees have suffered at the hands of difficult superiors. You can
 leave one job to find - you guessed it, another wolf in a pin-stripe suit in
 the next one. Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss is possibly the
 worst, directly impacting the emotional health and productivity of employees.
 Here are some all-too common tales from the battlefield:

Dev, an engineer, still shudders as he recalls the almost daily firings
 his boss subjected him to, usually in front of his subordinates. His boss
emasculated him with personal, insulting remarks. In the face of such
 rage, Dev completely lost the courage to speak up. But when he reached home
depressed, he poured himself a few drinks, and magically, became as
 abusive as the boss himself. Only, it would come out on his wife and children.
 Not only was his work life in the doldrums, his marriage began cracking up
 too. 

Another employee Rajat recalls the Chinese torture his boss put him
 through after a minor disagreement. He cut him off completely. He bypassed him
in any decision that needed to be taken. "He stopped sending me any papers
 or files," says Rajat. "It was humiliating sitting at an empty table. I
knew nothing and no one told me anything." Unable to bear this corporate
Siberia, he finally quit. 

HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find public
humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave, but a
 thought has been planted. The second time, that thought gets strengthened. The
third time, he starts looking for another job. When people cannot retort
openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and
slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By
omitting to give the boss crucial information.

Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into
trouble. You don't have your heart and soul in the job." Different
 managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling,
 too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, too nit-picky. But they forget
that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on
too long, an employee will quit - often over a seemingly trivial issue. It
isn't the 100th blow that knocks a good man down. It's the 99 that went
before.
And while it's true that people leave jobs for all kinds of reasons –
for better opportunities or for circumstantial reasons, many who leave
would have stayed - had it not been for one man constantly telling them, as
Arun's boss did:"You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you." While it seems like
there are plenty of other fish especially in today's waters, consider for a
moment the cost of losing a talented employee. There's the cost of finding a
replacement. The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not
having someone to do the job in the meantime. The loss of clients and contacts
 the person had with the industry. The loss of morale in co-workers. The
loss of trade secrets this person may now share with others. Plus, of course,
the loss of the company's reputation.

Every person who leaves a corporation then becomes its ambassador, for
better or for worse. We all know of large IT companies that people
would love to join and large television companies few want to go near. In
both cases, former employees have left to tell their tales. "Any company
 trying to compete must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee,"
Jack Welch of GE once said. Much of a company's value lies "between the ears
 of its employees". If it's bleeding talent, it's bleeding value.
Unfortunately, many senior executives busy traveling the world, signing new deals and
developing a vision for the company, have little idea of what may be
 going on at home. That deep within an organization that otherwise does all
the right things, one man could be driving its best people away.





 



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