5 reasons HR departments failed to retain employees

Nimasha Rashani
5 min readDec 24, 2022

I consider, Human resources team to be super heros of an organization, regardless of how you think about this department, they try their best to keep all associates happy. HR and Technology world is changing rapidly and many need to catch up with the new trends. Meanwhile, keeping their most precious associates sounds a huge deal.

It’s a nightmare to see multiple associates leave your company, it can be a red flag to the business. Are you clueless why your every attempt to keep your employees happy is going wrong. Listed are 5 main reasons employees submit their resignations within their 1st year of service.

01. Lack of employee Recognition and Reward system

A reward system build to cater a wide variety of performers, it is suggested that effective recognition occurs in organizations that have a strong work culture.

According to an article published by the Cambridge University Press, promoting employee recognition policies in an organization has positively affected on well-being and psychological functioning of the workers.

Managers and other superiors should praise their employees’ efforts since such conduct can drive creativity and the application of behavior that leads to increased performance. When there is a lack of recognition it directly affect the employee’s intrinsic motivation and sense of achievement decreased in result cause associates to find better workplaces. This also questions the compensation plans of the organization as it should be fair based on the employee performance. Maintaining a well-planned reward system with employee recognition is crucial for the success.

02. Not looking at your employee data

In the contemporary world, data-driven decision making is a hot topic. When consumer brands increase their sales based on the sales data, many human departments failed to look at the big picture of their employee data. Analysing historical data to look at any patterns of turnover during last 5 years, predicting the future turnover and implementing action plans to navigate the challenge of reducing employee resignation during the 1st year must addressed before allocating budget to hire the next 100 associates.

Are you conducting surveys to measure the employee engagement and satisfaction? Did you identify top performers and least performed employees? Did you noticed a significant pattern in the past employee turnover?

It’s high time to seek support from your HRIS vendor to know more insights about your people.

03. Paying less attention to the Generational gaps

With the Gen Z entering the talent market, many companies failed to identify the workplace needs of this generation. Old-fashioned meetings to teach business etiquettes will not be a challenging event for them. By understanding this generation, you can minimize the impact of turnovers. They are looking for flexible work; they look for a great work culture, seeking to develop their skills. According to Gartner, Gen Zers are not job hoppers — they are role hoppers and natural entrepreneurs. If your Human resource team cannot cater thier needs, then you cannot attract this cohort in your organization.

Gen Zers Are Role Hoppers

On the other hand, millennials gazing at the new generation should not be ignored. Millennials are technologically savvy. Gen Zers are born with Technology and they don’t need to be trained to think digital. Given that Gen Zers want to be versatile (as opposed to Millennials who prefer to be specialists), HR strategy need to serve all the generations. Your managers should trained to identify different personas in their team in order to mentor and guide the employees.

Refer more information via The Career Aspirations of Generation Z

04. Lack of diversity, Inclusions and Equality

An area many people paid their attention in 2022. After many seminars, work conferences, it’s essential to maintain a work culture that support diverse workforce, including LGBTQIA+ community. If you don’t feel belong at workplace, it is obvious you don’t want to work happily, rather you contact your network to share your cv.

A plethora of research point out the high turnover because of the lack of diversity, inclusion and equity at workforce.

At the end of the day, employees will stay at your organization long term if they feel they have a future for themselves. It is the utmost responsibility of the HR departments to create a comfortable workplace for any person. A good example, would be a space without background noise for autistic employees. A separate break-out space for woman to stay comfortably during the menses pain. May be an extra time off to rest during these pain. You can simply ask your employees, “ what would be the ideal comfortable work space looks like for you?” That way you can be proactive to create a workplace accessible for all.

05. Not being an Agile HR team

World is changing in a fast phase, that means businesses are adopting to these changes while HR departments have to change their strategies quickly to accommodate the modern World.

That’s a main reason HR managers and teams should be up to date with the current trends in the HR Technology world.

For an example, an employee who wanted to resign due to work pressure needs ultimate resignation. Not the sympathy, fall promises or a sudden salary increment. HR department can represent the employee to understand the current workload, what can be done and monitor the employee needs. If the HR department says, they can’t help because it’s the nature of the work and then they are not being responsive.

To be an agile HR team, you need to have a real-time employee feedback system that enable you to prioritize responsiveness towards employee feedback and re-evaluate the changes you made. According to Culture Amp, agile feedback processes facilitate timely pulse checks to gather real-time feedback on how new initiatives are being experienced on the ground.

The solution is to pay close attention to these areas within your company and measure the success rate of your actions towards the employee engagement and employee satisfaction which will reduce the turnover.

In summary, humans are the centerpiece of the success of a business. Treating and taking care of the associates of your company should be the main goal of the human resource department. The solution is to pay close attention to these areas within your company and measure the success rate of your actions towards the employee engagement and employee satisfaction which will reduce the turnover. We can reduce the turnover rates by using well-planned reward systems, using people analytics for insights, creating a culture for all generations, building a diversity, Inclusions, Equality in the work environments and being agile to face the constantly changing business world.

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Nimasha Rashani

🇸🇪 Living and Exploring The Beautiful Sweden ✨ Analyst by profession 💻 https://linktr.ee/nimasharashani