15 Signs Your Employee Wants to Quit

It's better to early figure out your employee wants to quit!

   As an employer, you often expect your manpower to be dedicated persons apart from being multitaskers, strategists, deciders, born marketers, cautious persons, independent thinkers. You highly treasured those who are devoted to your company for long. It would come as a shock that your employee suddenly asks for a quit. If you figure signals they are about to leave, you will be one step ahead to retain them, or whatever is the best for both you and the worker. You have poured lots of time and efforts training them and making them a best fit for specific positions. Leaving them go may be a big loss, let alone you may have difficulty finding out another appropriate person that fill in the position that employee leaves. As reported by Gardner, before they quit, most workers in the study had at least one trait in common. That is, they began not to engage in the working place.

Below are 10 more subtle yet consistent behavioural changes employees often make in 1 or 2 months before they quit. The first 10 signals are resulted from Gardner’s study. If employees show at least 6 of those behaviours, it would be 80% of accuracy that they are about to leave your company. Consider it and give the best manpower solution.

             1. Give fewer useful contributions in meetings

Very often, dedicated employees will raise up their constructive ideas for the company growth. Even if they are of quite reserved type, they will give some attentive attitude, and provide valuable contributions through thinking hard about what they will voice and how helpful it is. Thus, if your employees are less engaged in meetings than usual, it may be a sign that something is up. `

  2.  Be reluctant to commit to long term projects

Committing to long-term projects means they can’t leave the job as planned. Then if they are hesitant to take care of such projects, it may be a hint that they don’t want to get involved longer.

           3. Act quieter and more reserved

Once they want to leave, they find just about everything around them less engaging, whether it is a company activity, a meeting, some colleague gatherings or whatever. They will act more reserved, and quiet.

           4. Be less interested in advancing in the company

Employees are often eager for job advancement. They will set it as the goal and try to achieve that goal. Those who want to quit will show less interest in advancing in the company.

 5. Show less interest in pleasing the employer than before

At workplace, it is good to foster a good relationship with subordinates, coworkers and especially with superiors. If your employee has recently shown less interest in pleasing the boss than before, that behavioural change should be noted.

  6. Avoid social interactions with the boss and other management members

If you realize such a change, just raise the questions like, “Why does he do so? Any wrong from the management? Or does he find no interest in the job?”

7. Suggest fewer new ideas or improvement approaches

Continuous improvement pushes up the company development. For an employee, bringing up new helpful ideas or innovative approaches will be recognized as valuable contributions. Once he makes fewer of such suggestions than before, there may be some problem.

8. Do the minimum amount of work needed and don’t go beyond the call of duty any more

It will be a problem if your employee, unlike before, has done the least required amount of work. Perhaps he gets bored at work, feels tired with work overload, or doesn’t want to stick with the job.

9. Get less involved in training and development programs

Training would help out a lot with employee’s capability development and work performance. If your employee participates less in trainings, he may be less interested at work, lowly expect further improvement and not want to have much thing to do with the company.

10. Dropped work productivity

A noticeable sign your employee is about to leave is that his work productivity becomes lower.

Below are other 5 signs that your employee wants to jump ship. They can apply to other problems aside from this case of job quitting.

           11. Not as friendly with the coworkers

Just like a personal break-up, fading connections with colleagues makes it easier for the employee to leave. As an eagle-eyed manager, you may find him start distancing himself from others no matter how social he was to begin with.

12. Make exact arrivals and departures

This will be an obvious sign if in the past, the employee would often turn up early, leave late or be voluntary for an extra project. And the more obvious sign is that your worker shows up chronically late or leave early.

13. Just get a degree, license, or other certifications

…and has barely mentioned it to you. Surely, there are cases when a worker is completing a degree or decides to get hold of a new accreditation whilst planning to stick with his post. Yet, in case of the greatly hush-hush undertaking, he is possibly making himself look better for the job hunt. If not, why would he be spending all that money, time and effort just to keep the position that he already has?

14. There have been main company changes lately

This one is kinda tricky as when you have lots of other stuff going on, you may not notice the cues that a certain worker is not happy with how it’s all unfolding. Perhaps there has been lots of turnover lately especially with the management or maybe there are some new guideline that might be viewed as strict. The company changes can be good to someone but be devastating to another.

15. Just have a main, positive life event

From marriage to children, the big events of life that are overwhelmingly joyful can also mean the transition time for workers. Aside from the changes related to an employee’s welcoming a baby, don’t overlook other big events like her publishing a book, attempting for the Olympics, getting engaged. With other things to concentrate on, she may think she doesn’t have sufficient time for the current job.

Overall, keeping your eyes open for the signs your employee is about to leave will give you an advantage whether you desire to try to persuade her/ him to stay or get prepared for transition in someone new.