Every leader dreads the day when their best performers and team members announce that they can no longer continue working with them. Such instances of good employees leaving make leaders and management curious and shocked about what could have gone wrong.
As a leader, you can feel blindsided by such situations. The reasons employees give often seem disturbing, especially when you realize they've been living with those challenges for a long time in the company.
When the tolerance level of good employees and high performers crosses a certain threshold, such exits are bound to happen, even though it might seem unannounced or surprising to you.
A 2023 Gartner survey shows that 47% of company attrition was among high performers.
We'll look at why you didn't see such surprising exits coming from your best performers, and how you can avoid such situations in your company. You'll also learn some of the best predictors for keeping your best people from deciding to leave suddenly.
TL;DR
- Good employees don't quit over one bad experience. The decision stems from months of suppressed anger and frustration over one or more unresolved challenges at work.
- Top reasons high performers quit include a gradual loss of trust, no scope for growth, burnout from overachieving, unfair pay and benefits despite years of significant contribution, and more.
- Even when leaders detect disengagement among high performers, they often try to fix it with temporary perks rather than addressing the root cause of the misalignment between expectations and reality.
- High performers slowly disengage and quietly quit. They reach out to contacts and attend interviews before ever announcing their decision to their managers. Exit interviews rarely help retain them once that decision is made.
- Learn how to catch this misalignment early, before your good employees decide to switch.
What Are the Common Reasons Why Good Employees Quit
The reasons top performers quit don't come from nowhere. They've always been there, and beyond a certain point, they become intolerable enough that they decide enough is enough.
Here are some of the most common reasons employees leave after giving their best to a company.
1. Bad management
Year after year, people leave a company because they work under a toxic or bad leader. Even if the company had the best policies and preaches employee-friendliness, an inefficient leader/manager alone can be enough to make a good employee quit.
Every employee spends a significant part of their day with their team leaders discussing work progress, challenges, and ideas. A leader who is unaccountable or does not align with the team members’ values becomes a strong reason for good employees to disengage and quietly quit.
2. No visible path forward
High performers put in their best effort, which translates into the ideal results the company desires. In return, they definitely seek timely career progression and growth. A slight stagger in the promotion timeline may be tolerated. Still, several years spent in a role without any growth or perks can slowly make good performers look for opportunities outside the company.
High performers are aware of their skills and market requirements for their expertise. They can easily detect if the company will provide the right scope for their timely growth. When your company cannot support its best performers, it is a clear sign that they can announce their exit at any time.
3. They feel invisible
Ideally, a company’s best employees become the stars or the faces of a company’s brand image. Their LinkedIn posts and announcements about workplace recognition show how happy and engaged they are with their work for you.
In contrast, a lack of recognition of consistently high-achieving employees makes them feel less valued by the company. They say nothing, wait to see if they will get their due, and finally decide they cannot wait any longer.
4. Burnout from doing too much, too well
We have all come across teams where the high performer is burdened with work, in the guise of
“They have a solution for everything”
“This person gets work done hook or crook”
“Always available during any problem,”
and we have heard more.
It is no wonder that good employees are reliable and proactive in solving challenges. However, when their reliability becomes punishment when they need to work extra and cover up for others’ inefficiency with no additional benefits or perks, they detect exploitation.
5. Pay that didn’t keep pace with performance
We have to admit that compensation is still a leading factor in keeping even your company's highest performers loyal to you. When your good employees find a new joinee in your team, start with a pay package better than what they have earned with years of loyalty and dedication; it hurts them.
Biased and unfair evaluation also contributes to high performers not getting their rightful due during their tenure in the company, forcing them to look for opportunities with compounded hikes and benefits.
6. Misaligned expectations or values at the company level
HR managers and top leaders often fail to detect the misalignment between what they preach through company goals and values and the prevailing company culture. This ideal holds especially true when high performers go unnoticed in recognition, value, and growth.
For instance, a company boasts that a majority of its members work from home and deliver results. However, it fails to recognize the few critical team members who show up at work every day and coordinate sub-tasks to produce the final result. And when these critical employees quit, the company still doesn’t realize what it could have done to better compensate them.
The Real Reason Good Employees Leave That Nobody Talks About
The reasons we discussed earlier are cited for almost every employee exit, to the extent that companies have started normalizing them and simply moving on to the next hiring drive.
Let's address the root cause that pushes someone who deeply understands how your company runs and has given it real time and effort to finally decide to leave.
Values misalignment
Across all the reasons we saw earlier, there is a common problem: a misalignment between expectation and reality. This misalignment can be confusing. Two employees on the same team with equal pay, growth, and achievements, and the same treatment from their leaders, can have different values and beliefs. One may feel the company is the best fit for them, while another may feel they deserve better.
Here is where getting to dig deeper into value profiles makes a difference.
Why “Exit Interview reasons” are almost always wrong
Although exit interviews are great tools for proactively avoiding future attrition, they can do very little to convince a good employee who has announced their decision to leave. In fact, departing employees rarely share their misalignment with their leaders and instead stick to standard responses such as “better opportunity”, “career growth”, “flexibility”, and so on.
Giving honest responses in exit interviews hardly makes a difference to the exiting employee, who treats it as a mere formality before they leave. Understanding the expectation-versus-reality gap requires more precision than is asked in exit interviews.
Good employees don’t complain; they just start job hunting
We discussed earlier how good employees are well aware of their skills and expertise. They do not spend time filing grievances, discussing solutions that never get implemented, or voicing their concerns to leaders/peers.
Instead, they immediately start looking for opportunities, updating their resumes, attending interviews, and negotiating their best offer while remaining completely neutral and consistent at work. That is why silence cannot always be mistaken for agreement.
The blind spot: you’re measuring performance, not alignment
Performance metrics show employee engagement levels, but they cannot predict how long employees will remain the same way. Attendance, KPI’s, and work results may all seem consistent while your best employees plan for the perfect exit opportunity, because they are highly skilled, right?
Perfect performance and productivity metrics do not show how an employee’s values align with the team's and leader’s values and beliefs, or how long they can tolerate misalignment. If good employees start to become inefficient at work, they have already decided to leave.
The Warning Signs Before “I Found Another Opportunity”
High performers are not just skilled experts but also skilled in planning their exit without any doubts or rumors. They are well aware of their demand in the industry, and their signs of disengagement and quiet quitting are often brushed aside because they have always been so.
Here are some signs leaders must not ignore, especially when they appear in their good employees.
1. Their communication volume drops. Being quiet and neutral in meetings with few or no questions or opinions from actively engaged performers is definitely a warning sign to notice.
2. They put less effort into arguing or pushing for their initiatives because they are aware of what the outcomes will be anyway.
3. They work to do the bare minimum. Burnout, working overtime, and finding solutions are no longer their distinctive work patterns.
4. You can find them using their PTO more frequently or being OOO (out-of-office) more than usual.
5. You find their LinkedIn profile updates to show that they are “Open to Work”, engagement with recruiters, and find their resumes listed in talent pools and job portals.
6. They are no longer interested in future work scope or opportunities in the company, and attend one-on-one leadership sessions just for the sake of it.
How to Prevent Good Employees From Leaving
No matter their expertise, every employee’s requirements are relatable and can be resolved with the right interventions. High-performing employees require additional focus from leaders to ensure they are well cared for as they contribute to the company’s growth.
1. Have “stay conversations”, not just performance reviews
In addition to feedback surveys, engagement and retention surveys, and peer discussions, leaders must hold occasional one-on-one sessions with their top employees to gauge their satisfaction with the company.
Have casual conversations about what would make them consider leaving the company to switch to another, and how the company can help them fulfill their long-term professional and personal goals. Understand their stand on current issues that your company faces in the industry as well as among employees.
2. Match the role to what they actually value
Job satisfaction is not all about skills and expertise. Sometimes, even the best employees may be stuck under leaders who micromanage and do not value autonomy. Employees who value perfection and quality cannot work in teams or under leaders who value pace and unfair deadlines.
That’s why it is important to analyze the values and beliefs of your good employees and match them to roles and teams that suit them best. Good employees learn whichever team they join, ensuring your business is not affected. However, losing them to value mismatches can cost you a lot to sever and replace similar ones.
3. Fix the manager layer first
Leaders and top management decision-makers are often the biggest contributors to good employees leaving the company, with no other option. Just as employee performance is periodically reviewed, leaders must be reviewed as well to identify common pain points reported by their employees.
Most retention plans skip training managers on the latest employee concerns and how to address unique concerns. Leaders must focus on removing blind spots in leadership that cause employees to feel they are no longer valued.
4. Make growth visible
Good employees deserve timely promotions, recognition, and transparency in the scope of opportunities within the company. These mandatory perks make employees feel valued so they can do their best for the company.
Simply saying “you have scope for growth” without giving them timely promotions, pay raises, and meaningful job roles makes them lose trust in your leadership.
The Bottom Line
We keep repeating this: a resignation announcement of a good employee is hardly a bolt out of the blue. It is often the last stage of a series of unpleasant experiences and loss of trust from such employees, who meticulously plan to leave for better opportunities.
This planning and silent transfer execution happened because their concerns were not taken seriously by your leaders and HR managers. The harder part is finding a strong replacement for your best employees and taking the time to let them excel and show results at work.
Moreover, the departure of a high performer affects the team’s morale and engagement, making them apprehensive about their future in the company after the loss of their best member. This ripple effect can further trigger a series of quiet quitting and turnover.
How Revaluate180 Helps You Catch This Before an Exit Interview
Retention tools and feedback channels, such as engagement surveys, exit interviews, retention surveys, and turnover insights, discuss the problems and concerns that employees have faced. They do not warn proactively about possible disengagement among high achievers and actively engaged employees.
Revaluate180 works upstream to detect and anticipate potential concerns. Our values- and behavior-based assessment helps surface alignment gaps, decision drivers, and potential engagement risks your team currently faces. These insights are crucial for identifying whether your best employees are happy working under you or looking to exit.
Rather than relying on guesswork, the values assessment provides data-backed evidence of what makes your best employees work the way they do, how they can remain consistent, and potential threats to their tenure at the company, along with related action plans.
If you have been disappointed by the sudden exit of one of your strong team members, you need to clear one or more blind spots before more employees follow suit.
Book a call with us to understand what is driving your team’s performance, whether your team is aligned on work values, and how you can address retention risks.
