(Time to read this Blog is about 2.5 minutes)

Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking:

1. My Biz Quote of the week:

“A family business is simply a partnership where blood boils at room temperature.”

…Donald Cooper.

2. The 6 key requirements for a successful Partnership or Family Business. Much of my Biz Coaching work is in solving problems in Partnerships and Family Businesses.  What I’ve discovered is that there are 6 key success factors…and you need all 6 for it to work.

To download my insightful Biz Tool #A-11 to rate your Partnership or Family Business in these 6 key factors, Click here.     

3. Thank heavens for dykes. 25% of the Netherlands is below sea level.   
4. So, what’s in a name? With over 15,000 locations, Dollar Tree is one of North America’s largest ‘ultra-low-priced’ discount chains.  Everything in the store was just one dollar.  In fact, the trunk of the tree in their logo is the number ‘1’

But, after 35 years of selling everything for just $1, they were recently forced by increased costs to raise prices on most items to $1.25. The

response has been brutal, with customer comments like…  

–  “This is a calamity!”

     –  “Does NOT sit right with me.”

–  “I’m sick to my stomach.”

So, here’s a question for you.  Are your business name, your business model and business location sustainable, or have you in some way backed yourself into a corner?  For example, many tire shops now also do mechanical repairs, but most of them are still named ‘Tire Shops’ leaving us to assume that ‘tires’ are all they do…or all that they’re really good at. 

Now, to this week’s important topic:

The top 5 reasons for staff quitting during ‘The Great Resignation’:

There’s been much talk about ‘The Great Resignation’ in the past year with millions of employees quitting their jobs each month. To be fair, these mass resignations are happening more in specific ‘customer-facing’ industries, such as:

• Accommodation and Food Services,
• Retail Trade,
• Professional and Business Services,
• Arts, Entertainment and Recreation.

Much of the media discussion about ‘The Great Resignation’ has focused on employee dissatisfaction with wages.  However, according to a recent study by researchers at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the top 5 reasons for staff quitting during ‘The Great Resignation’ 

in this extensive Survey, ‘wages’ ranked 16th among all stated reasons for quitting.  No one likes to be underpaid. But it turns out people like being disrespect and job insecurity even less.

The top 5 reasons for quitting were:  

1. Toxic culture. ‘A toxic business culture’ was #1 and was 10 times more important than compensation.  A ‘toxic’ culture could include lack of fairness and equity, an incompetent or badly behaved boss, not feeling safe or respected, failure to promote diversity and inclusion, lack of joy or comradery, unreasonable employment policies and unethical behavior.
2. Failure to recognize performance. Employees are more likely to leave companies that fail to distinguish between high performers and laggards when it comes to recognition and rewards. This isn’t just about compensation.  It’s about feeling seen and valued when you do excellent work.  
3. Job insecurity and business reorganization.  It’s probably no shock that feeling like you could lose your job at any moment makes you start searching for another job. Previous research has found that employees’ negative assessment of their company’s future is a strong predictor of staff turnover.  
4. High levels of innovation.  This one is less intuitive, but the researchers found that the more employees talked about innovation at their company, the more likely they were to quit. They suspect that’s because innovation (change) is hard – and hard on employees.   Innovation may be interesting and inspiring, but it can also burn people out, especially if it’s not handled right. 
5. Poor company response to COVID-19. Employees of companies that bungled their Covid response were more likely to quit.

Covid or no Covid, a toxic culture, failure to recognize performance or a feeling of job insecurity will send your employees packing in large numbers.  And, here’s the thing, your best and most talented employees will generally leave first.  Your  mediocre people and non-performers will stay with you, take ‘I don’t give-a-damn’ pills and hope you won’t notice.  And we all know how that will end. 

That’s it for this week…

Stay safe…live brilliantly!       

Donald Cooper 

Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability.  He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.