Five Ways to Drive Your Best Workers out the Door

Mistake No. 3: Deny New Opportunities and Challenges.

As a facilitator for the Regional Leadership Forum, a development program run by the Society for Information Management, Bart Bolton sees many promising IT workers. In fact, most who attend the nine-month program are sponsored by their organizations because they're considered high- potential employees.

But not all companies know how to manage such workers. Bolton remembers one senior IT manager who found that his boss wasn't willing to give him new opportunities after he completed the program.

"He wanted more challenges and more responsibility. They talked about it, and nothing happened," says Bolton, who is also a leadership consultant at Lifetime Learning in Upton, Mass.

The manager didn't stick around. Within a few months, he found a new position at another company where he felt he had more opportunities to grow.

The better way: Set realistic expectations, says Anne Marie Messier, founder of Straightline Management Solutions in Chelmsford, Mass. Tell workers why they're being sent for training and what they can expect once the training is completed. If you don't have immediate opportunities for advancement, letting enthusiastic workers know that they are on the short list for new challenges can go far in retaining them. But be sure to follow through.

Mistake No. 4: Don't Listen to Your Employees.

As a senior systems analyst working on a team to develop clinical and business applications at a hospital, Ben Berry worked with a medical doctor to determine business requirements for the entire institution.

Although he and the doctor shared responsibility for the task, Berry remembers that the doctor didn't want to hear anyone else's ideas. "He didn't take input from the team. He was trying to drive all the decisions. It was undermining the team, and I personally felt underutilized," says Berry, who is now CIO for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Berry discussed the situation with his supervisor and the doctor directly. But nothing changed, so he left for a better position.

The better way: Use all the talent around you. "We hire people that we believe can do the job," Berry says. "If we don't allow them to use all the tools in their toolbox, or we try to pigeonhole people into doing it the way we've always done it, then we're doing a disservice to the individual, the team and the organization."

Open-door policies and consensus-building allow all staffers to contribute and voice their opinions, he says.

Mistake No. 5: Change the Work Environment Without Considering the Impact on Employees.

When a national retailing company outsourced its IT operations and most of its business analysts, it learned how the talented workers who are left behind typically react: They bolt.

Bob Rouse, a professor of computer science and IT planning officer at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, knows the story. The outsourcing reduced the company drastically -- from about 2,500 IT employees to 1,000, he says. The remaining employees handled more work and different work than they had been doing. Moreover, many of the best employees had gone to the outsourcer, and because the surviving top-notch workers found themselves working with a weaker internal team, they had to pick up even more of the slack.

As a result, the company lost 10% of its top people within a year. "These were very marketable people who would never have considered leaving the company if it hadn't been [for the] outsourcing," Rouse says.

The better way: Keep the people in the business equation. Companies often focus on business objectives and financial goals when making tactical moves and forget that "there are human beings left behind," says Bob Eubank, executive director of the Northeast Human Resources Association in Wellesley, Mass.

To avoid an exodus of top performers after a change, executives and managers should tell workers about impending events as early as possible, Eubank says. Managers should be particularly attentive to their best workers, letting them know about postchange opportunities. If employees see opportunities down the road, he adds, "people are often willing to sacrifice."