---
title: "Employees Don't Quit Their Jobs, They Quit Their Bosses"
description: "Managers often complain about their best employees leaving, citing disruptions and recruitment costs, but they miss the real issue: employees quit their managers, not their jobs. This article outlines nine reasons why good employees leave, including overwork, lack of recognition, disrespect, broken promises, and more, and suggests ways to retain them."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-05-20"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/employees-don-t-quit-their-jobs-they-quit-their-bosses-339c2bc0.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/HRxfQIEsOEwDZ4neMNYU9g"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%91%98%E5%B7%A5%E8%BE%9E%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%AF%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C-%E8%80%8C%E6%98%AF%E4%BB%96%E7%9A%84boss-339c2bc0.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/employees-don-t-quit-their-jobs-they-quit-their-bosses-339c2bc0/"
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---

# Employees Don't Quit Their Jobs, They Quit Their Bosses

> Managers often complain about their best employees leaving, citing disruptions and recruitment costs, but they miss the real issue: employees quit their managers, not their jobs. This article outlines nine reasons why good employees leave, including overwork, lack of recognition, disrespect, broken promises, and more, and suggests ways to retain them.

Managers often complain about their best employees leaving, and there is indeed much to complain about—good employees leaving causes work disruption, higher recruitment costs, and so on. While managers complain about these obvious business problems, they overlook the key point: employees don't quit their jobs; they quit their managers. Unfortunately, this is easy to overlook, and it requires a new perspective and other means to solve this management problem.

First, we need to understand the nine reasons that drive good employees to make up their minds to leave:

**Overwork**
Nothing increases employee turnover more than overworking employees. Overusing employees can indeed bring great value, which traps managers in this vicious cycle. Excessive workload troubles employees, as if their outstanding performance brings not rewards but rather punishment. Increasing workloads also lead to decreased work efficiency.

Recent research from Stanford University shows that working more than 50 hours per week leads to a significant drop in productivity, and beyond 55 hours, people cannot handle anything else outside of work, with productivity hitting rock bottom.

If managers want top talent to take on more work, the best approach is to promote them. Excellent employees can accept a larger workload, but they cannot accept suffocating intensity. Promotion, salary increases, and title changes are all viable methods. If you simply increase workload without offering other benefits, soon another job will offer employees everything they deserve.

**Employees' efforts and contributions are not recognized and rewarded**
We easily underestimate the role that simple verbal encouragement can play, especially for top employees who are self-motivated. Everyone likes rewards; managers need to confirm with their employees what they need. For some, it may be promotion and salary increase, while for others, it may be public recognition and praise. If you can do this, they will work even harder.

**Lack of respect**
More than half of employees leave because of tense relationships with their bosses. Smart managers know how to balance work management and humanized management of subordinates.

This requires bosses to recognize employees' achievements, comfort employees during critical project stages, and inspire employee morale. Bosses who don't care about employees' feelings at all are likely to lose employees. Wanting employees to work 16 hours a day, not caring about their feelings, and only looking at work output can only lead to dissatisfaction and departure. A boss who doesn't give employees attention is very unpleasant for employees.

**Managers don't keep promises**
Making promises puts managers on the line between keeping promises and causing turnover. If a manager makes high promises, in employees' eyes, it builds an image of trustworthiness and respect (which are two important qualities of excellent managers). But if they break previous promises, the manager's image may become one of breaking trust. After all, if even the boss doesn't keep promises, why should others?

**Promoting the wrong people**
Hardworking employees are willing to work with like-minded colleagues. If managers don't hire the right people, it can easily have a negative motivational effect on employees.

Promoting the wrong people is even worse. If senior management hands over work to a middle manager who only knows how to flatter superiors and bully subordinates, it is a great insult to dedicated employees. No wonder they quit.

**Not giving employees opportunities to pursue career dreams**
Outstanding employees are passionate. Providing them with opportunities to pursue their dreams can greatly improve their work efficiency and career satisfaction. But many managers only want employees to be responsible for very segmented work, fearing that if they take on too many tasks, work efficiency will decrease.

In fact, there is no evidence for this. Research shows that people who have the opportunity to pursue career dreams and are given more freedom are five times more efficient than those who work mechanically.

**Managers don't develop employees' professional skills**
When managers are asked about neglecting employees, they often excuse themselves by saying they trust them and give them full autonomy, etc. This is actually meaningless. Excellent managers try to manage employees even if they are super geniuses, and they continuously receive feedback from employees and provide feedback.

Management has a beginning but no end. When excellent managers find employees with exceptional performance, they have full authority to decide whether to develop new areas to improve employees' multiple skills. The best employees crave feedback, and managers have an obligation to make it a reality. Otherwise, they will feel bored or unmotivated.

**Employees' creativity has no place to be used**
Excellent employees are constantly trying to improve themselves. If they are just content with the status quo and their talents are used excessively, this will make them hate the job. Confining employees' innate desire to improve knowledge in a narrow cage not only limits them but also limits managers from carrying out work better.

**Underutilization**
Good bosses challenge employees by assigning seemingly impossible tasks, because extraordinary goals and increasing performance pressure push employees out of their comfort zones to seek higher achievements. Good managers do their best to help them achieve their goals. When employees think their current work is too simple and boring, they will look for more challenging work.

To retain talent, you need to think carefully about how to treat them, because good employees have sufficient work ability and thus have better choices. Therefore, managers need to find ways to make them willing to stay.

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