I speak to great people every day who although they may be well paid, still want to leave their job. So what are the motivating factors behind wanting to move on from their current company?

1.       Promotion.

This is the number one reason people want to leave their current company and take the risk, so that they can keep learning and keep growing in their career.  If there is one thing excellent people hate it is being bored. When they become bored, they start thinking about their career goals and how long it will take them to get there and it is only a matter of time until they realize that things are moving too slowly in their organization and they must do something about it. This usually comes down to the expectations set by their managers and it is very important to manage these expectations about time in role very carefully.

2.       Looking for a change in company/category/brands/market.

A great employee is great because of their ambition to always be learning, and the best people want to have as many different experiences as possible. They want to work on internal and external facing role, within sales, marketing, Digital, in both developing developed markets, etc… This allows for them to have a full array of career experiences to get to their final goal, which in most cases, is running all parts of a business. Some of the top companies manage their employee’s careers like this already, but others do not and it’s something important to always be thinking about, especially if people in your team has expressed their wants for diversifying their experiences.

3.       More inspiriting company culture.

It is hard to have a company culture where diversity can still be at the forefront and everyone will work well within the company’s culture. This is where some companies go wrong and everyone in the company is the same. There are a number of companies that have achieved it and this will help to retain your top talent in the company.  Each company has to have its balance between being organized, but not being too slow and process based. Also, reacting fast to the market changes, but not being so chaotic that the strategy changes every day and projects are never seen out. Of course not everyone will work well in every culture, but it is important to have a culture with values that you stick by.

Obviously depending on your level in the company, not all of these things can be done to retain talent in your team, but your influence in these areas will make a big difference.