Top 10 Indicators an Employee May Be a Flight Risk

Stressed Employee at Computer Desk

At a Glance

1) How much control does an employee have over their tasks, and the outcome: their performance?

2) How consistent are the messages we communicate and the expectations we set for our employees?

3) Do our employees have all the information they need to effectively do their job?

4) How much control does an employee have over their day/week? And their ability to meet deadlines?

5) How congruent are the employees KSAs with the job itself?

6) Are employees suddenly avoiding conflict or offering thoughts or ideas?

7) Are we exerting a moderate level of pressure and conflict among our employees?

8) Are our employees focused on rewards or the common goal?

9) Is an employee silo’ing or trying to fight their way out?

10) Is an employee taking an unordinary long time to perform a task?

Dozens of studies have found that algorithms significantly outperform trained professionals in terms of predicting outcomes. And those that didn’t found significant performance differences are calling it a draw.

So what is the algorithm doing to identify those likely to quit? It looks for common patterns, draws inferences, looks for activity that deviates from the norm.

This topic is not uncommon. It was arguably the most covered topic in my days teaching graduate classes in HR at Clemson University. As a quick summary, here are the top things you’ll hear over and over again in exit interviews:

  • I’m stifled
  • I’m not growing
  • I’m overworked
  • I’m not challenged
  • I’m not appreciated
  • I’m not properly compensated

What’s the commonality among these claims? Ambiguity. As in, I can’t define them. They likely mean different things to different people. So no wonder it’s difficult to identify whether these things are there. These are also things that sound more like hindsight reflection rather than symptoms of flight risk.

So let’s take a look at the symptoms of these claims in further detail, looking at some questions we can ask to identify if an employee is a flight risk.

1) How much control does an employee have over their tasks, and the outcome: their performance?

This question gets at process constraints. Process constraints occur when something is blocking the regular flow of tasks, information, or other key organizational activity. For example, when an employee is forced to wait for one, or several tasks to be completed prior to performing their own tasks, his or her performance is inhibited. Which means our performance, which is evaluated by our managers, is largely controlled by outside forces, we lose control, and justice for our rightful outcomes.

2) How consistent are the messages we communicate and the expectations we set for our employees?

This question targets competing priorities. Competing priorities occur when an employee, department, or entire organization is forced to choose from two or more actions, often in rivalry. For example, a sales representative at a rental car company may find it difficult to choose between serving the next customer in que immediately, or ensuring all of the information about the last customer is properly entered into the system. Ignoring the customer can damage the experience, but improperly entering customer information can create a host of other possible risks. So what does the sales representative select? The one with the lowest possible damage. This can be a serious hindrance for employees and for your customers.

Let’s add a layer and talk about communication incongruence. Mixed messages force employees to choose which one to stick to, and it is often the one that is status quo or the one with the lowest risk of repercussion in the face of errors.

By nature, we have biases that are present. We are very poor forecasters of ourselves, and even worse at guessing how long something will take (the planner’s fallacy). How much effort will be required. And how much random error occurs in a given day, week, year.

And the old moving of the goalposts. A company’s vision is a static target. The activities are a moving target, and our activities are largely a significant function of the company culture.

3) Do our employees have all the information they need to effectively do their job?

It’s tough to remember what it was like to buy a used car before lemon laws. Prior to legislation, used car dealers possessed substantially greater information than a potential buyer. This enabled an advantage to the salesperson. Prior to Lemon Laws, buyers were not enabled with information about the car’s history. At the organizational level, stalled, broken or walled information can be a substantial detriment to an employee’s ability to effectively perform job related tasks. This is what economists call information asymmetries.

4) How much control does an employee have over their day/week? And their ability to meet deadlines?

In today’s episode of “this meeting could have been an email,” let’s provide some context for the term “overworked.” Let’s say you are a marketing manager, and you have until Friday to roll out a new campaign. It’s Tuesday and it is due Friday. Tuesday, you have six meetings for a total of four and a half hours. Wednesday, seven meetings for six hours. Thursday, five meetings for five hours. When are you supposed to do real work? This is an example of resource waste. The resource here is the time to incubate and get the plan done.

5) How congruent are the employees KSAs with the job itself?

If you ever hear an employee say, “I went to college for this?” you can bet they are on the way out. This is another example of waste, but we call this knowledge and skills waste. Unused knowledge, skills and abilities can leave employees feeling unvalued and faceless. An algorithm can easily take a job posting, outline the skills and knowledge required for it. Then take a resume, infer the knowledge, skills and abilities of a job candidate. If there is serious disconnect by the time that candidate becomes an employee, we’ve got a risk factor out of the gate.

6) Are employees suddenly avoiding conflict or offering thoughts or ideas?

No one wants to work in a fear culture. If employees fear being reprimanded for offering thoughts or ideas, you are likely creating a fear culture. Employees in this scenario lack psychological safety. Employees feeling unsafe psychologically are more prone to error, avoiding healthy conflict and acquiring a drive to perform. And a willingness to stay.

That said, psychological safety can be much more subtle than we think. Hostile environments are easy to spot. Subtly suppressive environments are not.

7) Are we exerting a moderate level of pressure and conflict among our employees?

Conventional wisdom might suggest that employees don’t do well with pressure. And with conflict. This is not accurate. Studies show that a moderate level of pressure and conflict is healthy for growth of an organization, teams and employees. The key is moderation. Too much pressure and we wonder whether we are in the marine corps or working as a project manager at a bank. No pressure and we wonder if anything we do matters.

Ever wonder why drug stores, grocery stores, and gas stations are situated on top of each other? It comes from a mathematical model that suggests that being in the middle is key. The same rule applies here. Moderation wins, specifically with pressure and conflict.

8) Are our employees focused on rewards or the common goal?

This questions looks toward the culture of expectation. When employees have expectations about what they will receive if they complete their tasks tends to foster a culture where employees focus solely on the rewards. The path of growth favors vigilant efforts to perform tasks at a reasonable rate of accuracy or efforts to enhance knowledge, skills or abilities.

Can I take salesperson A and put them in location B and expect the same, better, or worse results?

Admittedly, this is a very specific question, but it has a purpose, and that is the concept of justice. Consumer studies show how much we value justice, and the same is said on the organizational side. Justice has many faces. But employees care about justice; fairness. Of how they are treated, how other employees are treated, and customers are treated.

But most notably about performance.

Take this scenario. Say you oversee sales at a regional bank in California. This year’s quarterly bonus will come from selling a new credit card the bank has rolled out. The first quarter results come in and we find the top ten sales people are all in Orange County. Is the talent superior in Orange County, or is it more likely that it’s pretty easy to sell credit cards when the median credit rating is in the 95th percentile? Meanwhile, the top salespeople are raking in terms of credit card applications, but can’t close the sale because the bank rejects half the people that apply.

9) Is an employee silo’ing or trying to fight their way out?

One of the greatest detriments to an organization is when employees selectively, or by design, operate from silos. Managers tend to have little awareness about what they are doing is noted, while they also have little to no knowledge as to what is happening outside of the silo. This leads to a multitude of negative, and often unintended, consequences. This shouldn’t be confused with autonomy. Silo’ing is stifling.

And it’s not a comfortable position to be in either. One study found that the number two thing that makes us question our wellbeing about the workplace is being alone. It’s probably worth noting that the number one is the immediate presence of a superior.

10) Is an employee taking an unordinary long time to perform a task?

Think about the last time you had to go to an event you really didn’t want to go to. Converse with people we don’t vibe with about things we don’t care about. The feeling after the event? Complete exhaustion.

If an employee is taking an excessively long time to finish a job, it’s likely because they have nothing else to do once the task is complete. This is the idea of emotional suppression. Our emotion is we are bored. But we suppress it because we have to look busy. Acting like we are doing something is actually more emotionally and physically exhausting than doing a lot.

The best way to predict who will quit – predict who will stay

I’ve run countless predictive models on employee retention, student retention, customer churn, you name it, across fourteen industry verticals. I’ve found one common theme among them. Predicting who will stay is pretty easy. Predicting who will leave, not so much.

One of the best explanations comes from Tolstoy in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same can be said of employees. Every employee has their own set of stuff they are working with. Put them together and you have quite the amalgam of possibilities.

So we are asking what are the likely indicators of an employee leaving? If we know the reasons are complex, are we even asking the right question? Or maybe we are asking the right question the wrong way.

When in doubt, flip the question on its head. I have a great deal of respect for a guy like Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert who grew tired of scholars asking what made people sad or depressed. He decided, why not ask what makes people happy? So If it is too complex to predict who will leave, try predicting who will stay. Find the few commonalities, and recraft a structure to recruit, hire, train, and retain the employees that fit those items.

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