Organisations can improve staff retention by making sure they promote and train the right managers.

Staff retention is an evergreen concern for any organisation, but even more so in a tight talent market. The last thing you want is to lose valuable, hard-won and hard-to-replace people.

This means keeping them happy and fulfilled, helping them grow and providing a positive environment. A lot of this should filter down from good leadership and management, but for many, this isn’t the experience.

According to Gallup’s State of the American Manager report, one in every two employees has left a job to get away from a manager, while a Harvard Business Review survey found 58 per cent of people say they trust strangers more than their own bosses.

That distrust seems to go both ways. A study by the Saratoga Institute cited by Leigh Branham, author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, found 89 per cent of bosses believe employees quit because they want more money.

This, of course, is a great self-pardoning move for any culpable boss, especially considering that, according to the study, only 12 per cent of employees do actually leave an organisation for greater remuneration.

Bottom-line impact

None of this is particularly surprising when you consider that many managers never receive management training. The impact a bad boss can have on their staff cannot be underestimated: employees feel miserable at work, which then follows them home, piling stress upon stress, leading to poor well-being, both mental and physical.

Unhappy and unhealthy employees raise rates of absenteeism and can affect corporate performance and customer ratings.

At the same time, replacing employees and training new people doesn’t come cheap. A conservative estimate for US workplaces is at least one-and-a-half times the exiting employee’s annual salary.

This can affect team morale in the office and lead to poor client or stakeholder relationships outside. It can also lead to damaged brands if ex-employees spread the word – people talk, after all.

So why does it keep happening? Why do organisations continue to promote strong technical performers into management roles without proper management training? And why do companies keep hold of bad managers?

Train to lead

Many businesses don’t measure employee retention per manager. At the very least, organisations should invest in training people to lead, not simply expect them to do it based on job performance.

True leadership qualities are innate in so few of us. Most of us are educated in and good at the technical aspects of our chosen professions, such as accountancy, but management is a whole other ball game and arguably harder to learn.

Gallup’s report talks about great bosses having a rare combination of five qualities. They are the abilities to:

· Motivate employees

· Assert themselves to overcome obstacles

· Create a culture of accountability

· Build trusting relationships

· Make informed, unbiased decisions for the good of their team and organisation.

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