The stupid, avoidable mistakes that make good employees leave

Travis Bradbury in Quartz

It’s tough to hold on to good employees, but it shouldn’t be. Most of the mistakes that companies make are easily avoided. When you do make mistakes, your best employees are the first to go, because they have the most options.

If you can’t keep your best employees engaged, you can’t keep your best employees. While this should be common sense, it isn’t common enough. A survey by CEB found that one-third of star employees feel disengaged from their employer and are already looking for a new job.

When you lose good employees, they don’t disengage all at once. Instead, their interest in their jobs slowly dissipates. Michael Kibler, who has spent much of his career studying this phenomenon, refers to it as brownout. Like dying stars, star employees slowly lose their fire for their jobs.

“Brownout is different from burnout because workers afflicted by it are not in obvious crisis,” Kibler said. “They seem to be performing fine: putting in massive hours, grinding out work while contributing to teams, and saying all the right things in meetings. However, they are operating in a silent state of continual overwhelm, and the predictable consequence is disengagement.”

In order to prevent brownout and to retain top talent, companies and managers must understand what they’re doing that contributes to this slow fade. The following practices are the worst offenders, and they must be abolished if you’re going to hang on to good employees.

They make a lot of stupid rules. 

Companies need to have rules—that’s a given—but they don’t have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order. Whether it’s an overzealous attendance policy or taking employees’ frequent flier miles, even a couple of unnecessary rules can drive people crazy. When good employees feel like big brother is watching, they’ll find someplace else to work.

They treat everyone equally. 

While this tactic works with school children, the workplace ought to function differently. Treating everyone equally shows your top performers that no matter how high they perform (and, typically, top performers are work horses), they will be treated the same as the bozo who does nothing more than punch the clock.

They tolerate poor performance.

 It’s said that in jazz bands, the band is only as good as the worst player; no matter how great some members may be, everyone hears the worst player. The same goes for a company. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially your top performers.

They don’t recognize accomplishments. 

It’s easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Rewarding individual accomplishments shows that you’re paying attention. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you’re doing it right.

They don’t care about people. 

More than half the people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain that their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate their employees’ successes, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge them, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates. It’s impossible to work for someone for eight-plus hours a day when they aren’t personally involved and don’t care about anything other than your output.

They don’t show people the big picture. 

It may seem efficient to simply send employees assignments and move on, but leaving out the big picture is a deal breaker for star performers. Star performers shoulder heavier loads because they genuinely care about their work, so their work must have a purpose. When they don’t know what that is, they feel alienated and aimless. When they aren’t given a purpose, they find one elsewhere.

They don’t let people pursue their passions. 

Google mandates that employees spend at least 20% of their time doing “what they believe will benefit Google most.” While these passion projects make major contributions to marquis Google products, such as Gmail and AdSense, their biggest impact is in creating highly engaged Googlers. Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction, but many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies have shown that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.

They don’t make things fun. 

If people aren’t having fun at work, then you’re doing it wrong. People don’t give their all if they aren’t having fun, and fun is a major protector against brownout. The best companies to work for know the importance of letting employees loosen up a little. Google, for example, does just about everything it can to make work fun—free meals, bowling allies, and fitness classes, to name a few. The idea is simple: if work is fun, you’ll not only perform better, but you’ll stick around for longer hours and an even longer career.

Bringing It All Together

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

Why job interviews are pointless

Richard Nisbett in The Guardian


 

Hard taskmaster: Ricky Gervais as David Brent in The Office. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC



Statistics often sounds like a dry subject, but many judgments and decisions in everyday life would be improved by an application of statistical principles. Take the following scenario: a football scout hears of a player who has powered his team to a good win-loss record. His coaches think he’s one of the most talented players they’ve seen. But the scout is unimpressed by the one practice game he sees him in; he tells his manager it’s not worth trying to recruit the player. 

Most sports fans would think that was a pretty foolish call, right? Athletic performance is much too variable to base an important judgment on such a small sample. It’s not necessary to take a statistics course to get the correct answer to this problem.

But consider this problem: an employer gets an application from a junior executive with an excellent college record and strong references from his current employer. The employer interviews the applicant and is unimpressed. The employer tells his colleagues that it’s not worthwhile recruiting him.

Most people regard this as a reasonable sort of decision. But it isn’t. Countless studies show that the unstructured 30-minute interview is virtually worthless as a predictor of long-term performance by any criteria that have been examined. You have only slightly more chance of choosing the better of two employees after a half-hour interview as you would by flipping a coin.

In both of these cases, predictions based on references – school reports, prior performance, letters of recommendation – give a 65-75% chance of choosing the better of the two.

Why do we get the athletic problem right and the employment problem wrong? Because in the case of the job, unlike for athletic performance, we haven’t seen hundreds of candidates in interviews of a particular type and seen how well performance in the interview corresponds to ultimate performance in the setting we’re concerned about. We haven’t seen that the guy who looks like a dunce in the interview turns out to be a whiz on the job and the guy who aced the interview turns out to be a dud. The only way to see that the interview isn’t going to be worth much is to be able to apply the “law of large numbers”, which prompts the recognition that an interview represents a very small sample of behaviour, whereas the references summarise a lot of behaviour.

The bottom line: there’s safety in numbers. The more recommendations a person has, the more positive the outcome is likely to be for the employer. Consider the job interview: it’s not only a tiny sample, it’s not even a sample of job behaviour but of something else entirely. Extroverts in general do better in interviews than introverts, but for many if not most jobs, extroversion is not what we’re looking for. Psychological theory and data show that we are incapable of treating the interview data as little more than unreliable gossip. It’s just too compelling that we’ve learned a lot from those 30 minutes.

My recommendation is not to interview at all unless you’re going to develop an interview protocol, with the help of a professional, which is based on careful analysis of what you are looking for in a job candidate. And then ask exactly the same questions of every candidate. It’s harder to develop such a protocol than you might guess. But it can really pay off.

Unpaid interns charged £300 for a job reference by thinktank Civitatis

From The Guardian on 11/01/2015

A former aide to a Liberal Democrat peer has been condemned for charging former unpaid interns at his thinktank “£300 a go” for employment references.

Jan Mortier, who describes himself as a former consultant to Lord Garden, a one-time defence spokesman for Nick Clegg’s party, has admitted that he charges former unpaid trainees at his Civitatis International organisation for references, but denied that they had been interns, on the basis that they had been “trained directly” by him.

Civitatis International advertises itself as a private foundation “committed to promoting peace, dialogue and co-operation between nations and civilisations”, and has submitted evidence to parliamentary select committees as a thinktank. Until a year ago it ran a “junior associates” programme under which young people were charged over £1,600 for a three-month “unique experience in project management training at our international secretariat in the City of London that was instituted by us because British universities are not giving the skills or experience necessary to help young people secure careers in the policy sector”.

The junior associates programme, which did not offer a recognised qualification at the end or a guaranteed job, had been advertised on a website called Internwise, among others, which promotes itself as a “tool ideal to meet employers and gain some work experience”. At least one former junior associate has posted an online CV describing his role at Civitatis International as an “internship”. Civitatis invites “successful” junior associates to pay an additional £400 to £600 a year to become fellows of the organisation, which it describes as a private members’ club for “future leaders”.

Now it has emerged that Mortier, 37, has written to those who had been on the junior associate programme to inform them they must pay a £300 fee each time they want an employment reference.

Tanya de Grunwald, the founder of Graduate Fog, a graduate careers blog and a campaigner against the exploitation of the young, last night condemned Mortier and his organisation and said it was an extreme example of how the hopes of young people were abused. There has been a huge growth in unpaid internships in recent times, with an estimated 100,000 places advertised a year.

De Grunwald said: “Employing unpaid interns is bad enough, but charging them for a reference when they leave is appalling. We keep being assured that the graduate job market is picking up, but this case shows that there are still dark corners of it where unscrupulous employers find they can take advantage of young jobseekers’ desperation and naivety. This guy should be ashamed.”

Civitatis’s website says it was founded in 2012. A company with the same name, of which Mortier was a director, was struck off Companies House records in 2009 after being dissolved. It is not registered with the Charities Commission. Mortier declined to comment on the organisation’s tax status.

Civitatis’s website is advertising a summer school at a cost of £400 for the week. Those who attend are promised a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students around the world to gain employable skills”. It claims that it can offer “an introduction to the thinking of the Club of Rome”, the global thinktank where Mortier claims on his Linkedin profile to have “advised the secretary general on various issues”. A spokesman for the Club of Rome told the Observer: “Jan Mortier was an intern at the Club of Rome for five months in 2010. He left a month early following a dispute. There is no link between the Club of Rome and Civitatis International.” A spokesman for Civitatis said Mortier was a “full member of the Club of Rome EU chapter”, an affiliated Belgian organisation.

Civitatis’s website claims that “for a decade, Civitatis International has been coaching our junior associates to get policy jobs paying £24-£32,000 per year with a 100% success rate”. When approached by the Observer, Mortier admitted that “one or two” alumni might not have reached their goals yet. He said the £300 fee for an employment reference was a “fair administrative fee”.

Twelve ways to fix politics

Our politicians have lost all credibility. If they want us to engage with them, they had better mend their ways

• 
• • Suzanne Moore
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 28 May 2014 20.00 BST

(L-R) Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron leave after the wedding ceremony of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, in central London, April 29, 2011. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

What do the watery eyes of Nick Clegg and the resurfacing of Tony Blair mean? How many more pictures of a man with a pint of beer can anyone bear? Has a whole political class lost the election? What can be done to end their misery? Here are a dozen suggestions as to how politicians might do better ...

1 Forget this talk of reconnection with voters – it sounds stalkerish. Most people have never had a relationship with a political party in the first place. How come politicians carry on as if we were married to them? At what stage in politicians' careers, I often wonder, did they become so surrounded by like-minded people that they didn't notice that we left them long ago?

I learned this salutary lesson when I was working for a small but influential political monthly. Our circulation was smaller than that of Metal Detecting Weekly. Politics as it is practised is regarded by many as a similarly odd hobby. Only without the fun of going round a beach with headphones on.

2 If all political careers end in failure, then perhaps they all start with beliefs? These folk are sucked into a system in which those beliefs are so compromised, they become unintelligible to much of the electorate, who would be hard-pressed to say what their MP actually stands for. Anyone who appears to believe something or "be real" stands out. This is now called "character", as if having a set of extremely rightwing views is actually a sign of amazing individualism under a Tory government. Thus Miliband's current gig – "I feel your racist pain" – is never going to work. Coming from a guy whose parents fled fascism, it is painful. You can't outflank a single-issue politician by accepting their belief system.

3 The so-called "professionalising" of politics is widely despised. No one should become an MP without having done other jobs. The media doesn't count as a job! The small genetic pool of Oxbridge PPE types is bound to produce intellectually inbred and inferior thinkers. This is fine if we want cloned technocrats – but shouldn't we want the democracy that represents us to look like us?.

4 No one should stand for a seat in a place to which they have no connection. Why on earth should ambitious Londoners be helicoptered into safe seats? I have heard talk that the standard of MPs would drop if it were left to local talent alone. Yes, really.

5 Language: the terrible fear of actually saying something results in verbless slogans and expensive logos. Hardworking Britain Better Off, for instance, appears as if it were the result of a brainstorming session that had to be abandoned halfway through as a fire alarm went off. The making up of new phrases should always ring alarm bells. If you can't tell voters who you are and what you want to do with the pre-existing vocabulary and vernacular of the entire English language, surely that's not good.

6 Be honest about what you can and cannot do. Climate change and inequality are global problems. The idea that any economy can survive on its own is clearly nuts, as is the idea that children need to be schooled as if it were the 1950s. No man is an island, not even Nigel Farage. Because nowadays no island is an island.

7 Get with the programme. Alongside loss of reverence for politicians has been a flattening of media hierarchy due to social media. It no longer works to think of us as passive consumers of politics produced from on high. Unless, of course, you are the BBC,which covered the Euro elections as if none of us could use a calculator, thus calling it for Ukip from the very start.

This is a huge turnoff and though we perk up to any signs of actual leadership, whole swathes of debate are happening completely outside the traditional forums.

8 Spit it out. Much feels like a charade if policies are spun. What does a smaller state mean if not privatisation? Why not spell out the need to regulate big business instead of pretending market processes will self-adjust? Why has so little changed with the banking system? Don't underestimate those you seek to represent. We understand the need for regulation and safety nets.

9 Jokes. If they haven't occurred to you, then don't pay a committee to write them into your speeches. Even when professional comedians are involved, there is nothing more offputting than the phrase "topical comedy".

10 Media training. Don't go there. We can spot it a mile off. I blame Bill Clinton and his famous handshake that involved clasping your elbow with his free hand. I have always experienced media-trained politicians as strangely unsuccessful gropers with inappropriate smiles who practise unblinking eye contact.

11 Real life. This means more than two children and a wife who went to Zara and the claim you once liked a CD. Hinterland remains an undervalued asset. We are currently governed by those for whom culture and education is everything to do with getting a better job and nothing to do with having a better life.

12 Don't blame us. The disenchantment of the electorate means that the political class has to change or be changed. It's no use them crying, Sunset Boulevard style: "I am big. It's the politics that got small." The reality is that they have shrunk themselves into a self-regarding circle jerk propped up by a lazy media, just when the problems actually became epic. If they won't be part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

WHAT Do You Do? Great Responses to this question

1. I'm a proctologist. (Proc·tol·o·gy n. The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders affecting the colon, rectum, and anus.)


2. "I'm unemployed since leaving prison. But I have applications in to be a bouncer at several whorehouses. Why do you ask?"


3. The Queen: "Oh. I ride around in the last horse-drawn carriage in England—and give tiny hand-waves. But the pay is good."


4.  'Work covered by official secrets act' 


5. 'Model for a contraceptive products company'


6. 'Fiction writer for the police'


7. "It depends what day of the week it is"


8. Not a lot, but its how I do it that counts.

What happens to a Lottery winner?

Lottery millionaires each fund six jobs a year, study shows

3,000 £1m-plus winners have created another 3,780 millionaires among family and friends and contributed £750m to GDP

• Caroline Davies
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 October 2012 00.05 BST

Some of the National Lottery's 3,000 millionaire winners. Photograph: David Parry/PA

The balls have dropped and all six numbers match, so it's time to buy that Audi, book the holiday in the US and phone the estate agent. At least, that's what most lottery millionaires do, according to an analysis of spending and investment by jackpot winners.

Since its launch in 1994, the lottery has created 3,000 millionaires who have won more than £8.5bn in total, at an average of £2.8m each. The trickle-down effect means that between them they have created a further 3,780 millionaires among their children, family and friends, according to the forecasting consultancy Oxford Economics.

Most winners (59%) give up work straight away, but 19% carry on doing the day job and 31% do unpaid voluntary work. The good news for the economy is that 98% of winners' spending remained in the UK. Through their spending on property, vehicles and holidays, it is estimated that each winner keeps six people in a full-time job for a year.

Winners have contributed almost £750m to GDP, and generated more than £500m in tax receipts for the Exchequer. The bulk of the money went on property, with £2.72bn spent on winners' main properties, and £170m in paying off existing debt and mortgages.

Maintaining income was a priority, with £2.125bn spent on investments. Gifts to family and friends accounted for £1.17bn, and £680m was spent on cars and holidays.

The study, commissioned by Camelot to mark the 3,000 winners milestone, was based on research from 100 £1m-plus winners. It found that in total the 3,000 winners have purchased 7,958 houses or flats in the UK, or 2.7 each, spending £3.3bn. Most winners (82%) changed their main residence, spending an average £900,000.

The new home is likely to come with a hot tub, with almost a third (29%) putting that on their shopping list. A walk-in wardrobe was a must for 28%, almost a quarter (24%) opted for a property behind electric gates, and 22% had a games room, with 7% installing a snooker table.

Larger properties need maintaining, and 30% of winners employed a cleaner and 24% a gardener. A small proportion (5%) employed a beautician.

Audis were the favourite cars of 16% of winners, with Range Rovers and BMWs also popular purchases (11% each), as well as Mercedes (10%) and Land Rovers (5%). Winners spent £463m on 17,190 cars, with the average price of their favourite being £46,116.

Holidays were also a priority. The majority (68%) choose five-star hotels overseas. The US was the favoured destination for 27%, followed by the Caribbean (9%). Closer to home, however, UK caravan sales have benefited. Over the past 18 years, 10% of millionaires have bought a caravan, generating sales worth about £7.4m.

Some winners (15%) have started their own businesses, 9% have helped others to do so, and 6% have invested in or bought other people's businesses. Businesses started or supported by lottery winners employ 3,195 people, according to the study.

Andy Logan, co-analyst and author of the report, said: "The effect of a win spreads much further and wider than we anticipated. Not only does it transform the lives of friends and family, but each win has a measurable effect on the UK economy, especially with so much of it being spent in the UK. The use of each win creates a ripple effect across this generation and very often the next."

Could your star sign affect what you earn? Yes, says IFS

Could your star sign or the month of your birth affect how likely you are to hold down a job and what you will earn?
Yes, according to new research by no less an authority than the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), whose research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

But the explanation has less to do with astrology than how old you were relative to classmates at school. Previous research published by the IFS indicated that children born at the start of the academic year tend to achieve better exam results, on average, than children born at the end of the academic year.

In England, this means that children born in the autumn tend to outperform those born in the summer. New research published today by the IFS, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, shows that your date of birth also matters after schooldays. Compared to children born in September, those born in August are 20pc more likely to study for vocational qualifications – if they attend tertiary education at all – and 20pc less likely to attend a Russell Group or top notch university.

Claire Crawford, a director of the IFS and one of the authors of the report, said: “Studying for academic qualifications, attending a Russell Group university, and believing that you have control over your own life are all associated with a greater chance of being in work and having higher wages later in life.
This suggests that August-born children may end up doing worse than September-born children throughout their working lives, simply because of the month in which they were born.”

That’s good news for children born recently – who will have the star signs Scorpio, Libra and Virgo – but less encouraging for those born in the summer – with the star signs Leo, Cancer and Gemini. Are the latter really more likely to end up as Neets; Not in Employment, Education or Training?

For my part, I have always thought astrology is nonsense. But, as a former girlfriend pointed out: “You’re a typical  Virgoan, so you would say that, wouldn’t you?”