Don’t SCape Goat the Manager

It's commonly quoted line that says "People don't leave companies, they leave bad managers". Yet, it doesn't offer a complete perspective, especially in today's job market.

Attrition can happen driven by Pull factors or Push factors. Push factors drive (or push) the employee to look for new opportunities. These can be things like a bad boss, uncompetitive pay, micro management, lack of professional growth opportunities, toxic culture etc. Many of these factors, not all, are centered on the immediate manager's effectiveness or lack of it thereof.

However, in today's job market, there is an equally if not more compelling case of pull factors that are at work. There is talent demand-supply imbalance today in favor of the workforce, especially as companies struggle to meet the built up client demand (because of the pandemic). Captives and service providers, across many industries, are competing for the same trained talent pool. So, even if your workplace is great, and the employee is satisfied, he/she is being actively enticed (or pulled) with better opportunities from competing employers. Employees cannot be faulted for looking at opportunities that either offer a better financial reward or scope for career growth. However, they do need to view things from a medium term perspective and not make rash decisions, as this supply-demand imbalance will correct in the medium term.

Given the higher weightage of the pull factors driving attrition, it is important to relook at whether attrition should actually be a metric to measure effectiveness of people managers. In my view, a better way is to measure people engagement (measured through surveys) or employee NPS score (i.e. an employee’s likelihood to recommend the company as a place to work).

All we can ask of our managers is to focus on the process: build a strong work culture that’s employee centric, invest in your people through empowered role and active training opportunities, and offer competitive compensation. If you focus on the process for long enough the results will follow. Penalizing managers for solely for attrition is like finding a scape goat.