Losing your best talent is an awful thing. It feels like you lost a strong asset of your company. This is because you spent so much time and money training and mentoring this employee. Developing a talented employee is truly an investment in your company’s future. Unfortunately, people leave the big 4 accounting firms all the time.

The cost and time of training a new employee is dreadful. You also have to hope that they can measure up to the previous employee as well.

I’ve provide a brief list of the reasons why you are likely losing your most talented people.

Insufficient Recognition

Even the most selfless people desire to be acknowledged and rewarded for doing a good job.

It’s a basic human desire to have someone recognize your for good work. It’s also very motivating to know that you will be rewarded at the completion of your next project.

It’s important to reward employees through promotions and monetary rewards as well. There are also various incentive plans that you can utilize to recognize your employees.

If you don’t recognize your most talented employees, then you can expect to lose.

No Variety

People don’t want to believe they’re limited in their career potential. They hate going to the same place and performing mundane tasks every day for the rest of their lives.

People want to believe that they’re still growing in their professional life. They want something to look forward to.

If you don’t have a way for them to improve they won’t stay. They need a promotion or some kind of carrot to keep them going.

People don’t like bosses that can’t keep them motivated. They think employers don’t care about them if they don’t promote them and reward them.

No Worklife balance

Nothings burns out employees faster than having no worklife balance. Many people who love their careers love being at work, but that doesn’t mean they want to be there all the time.

It is often the most talented employees that you give the most work to. This means they are the ones whose worklife balance you are wrecking.

Giving them more work benefits you the most, but many employees don’t speak up to tell you they are overworked. Keep an eye on them and make sure you aren’t taking advantage of their type A personalities. Hire help for  them as needed and try to provide some worklife balance for them.

Lack of Goals

The most talented employees are frustrated by workplace with vague goals. Its hard going to a place with just general guidelines of where the company wants to be. The best employees want strong goals, and they want to smash them

Give employees attainable goals that way you can keep a positive environment.

Valuing Income over Talent

When a business values revenue more than their talent, the best people go somewhere else.

That leaves your organization with the least motivated people. You will only have the people that dont have motivation to find another job left.

You will find that focusing on only the income of your company will leave you with the least talented people in your organization. You need to drop down from you revenue generating bubble every now and then and check in on your employees.

You have to be willing to lead your people. Give them guidance and let them know you care about them and not just the income statement.

Insufficient trust

The most talented employees observe management to get cues on what their ethics are.

They don’t want to see you cutting corners on things that matter. They want to see you get to the right answer in the right way. If they see you doing bad things to other people, they know that will be them some day, and they’ll leave.

The worst case scenario is that people stay around because the ones that stay around will follow your unethical lead.

Bureaucracy

All companies need organization and a hierarchy, but too much red tape can limit your ability to keep talent.

If bureaucracy limits your best employees from contributing their ideas, then you need to reconsider your rigid hierarchy.

Make sure that you are constantly assessing yourself and your management style. You need to asses whether your management style is conducive to keeping your most talented people.