The pendulum is swinging back with all signs pointing to an improving housing market in 2025 and companies in the real estate, lending and title insurance industries must be prepared to meet the anticipated uptick in demand.
While you may not be leaping into hiring mode at this moment, what you want to avoid is losing good, experienced employees just when things are heating up.
To prevent staff losses, you first have to understand why employees leave. (Hint: It isn’t usually about the money.)
Here are some of the more aggravating conditions that inspire an employee to go looking for work elsewhere.
A poor working environment, especially a toxic culture, is most often ranked as the number one reason that employees leave their jobs.
Most employees spend 40 – 60 hours per week at work. That is a huge chunk of time to be miserable so it’s not surprising employees in that situation have their resume floating around town.
Sometimes a toxic work environment is a top-down problem, with managers favoring autocratic, authoritative and macro-managing tactics. But often even in the most enlightened and progressive companies there are pockets of toxicity that are hidden from view.
For instance, an individual manager may be a terrible communicator, or worse a passive aggressive personality that makes staff feel uncomfortable and unsure of what is being asked.
Bullying by managers or other staffers is another behavior that can send employees running for the exits or lead to anxiousness, mediocre performance and lack of motivation.
Every company should have an established protocol for employees to report any behaviors that are making them feel uncomfortable and those issues should be addressed quickly and respectfully.
Human beings want to grow in their careers and being slotted into one repetitive job with no hope of professional growth will seem like a dead end in brief period of time.
Growth doesn’t just mean a pay raise or a promotion. Often it is about learning a new skill, attending in person or online training to gain deeper insight into the work they are already doing, or being invited to the table to be part of developing new initiatives.
When employees are denied opportunities, they are likely to walk away. Investing in employee development can cultivate long-term loyalty as your people feel a shared interest in growing the company through enriching their own fund of knowledge and expertise.
In spite of how many hours we spend at work, we all have a life outside the office. An employee is a human being with personal obligations and companies who respect that truth are far more likely to keep their employees long term.
On the flip side, managers who resent someone leaving early to attend to a sick child, complain when someone takes a vacation, or legislate how and when someone takes their lunch hour is just aggravating.
Allowing your staff flexibility to take care of their families and their personal health creates happier and healthier workers. This can include everything from flex hours to working from home. It also means allowing employees to carve out time for medical appointments, the grace to respond to family emergencies as needed, and the freedom to take time at lunch to exercise.
Providing adequate PTO days and a plethora of other benefits also lets your employees know that you value them personally as well as professionally.
As you strengthen your staff for the work ahead in 2025, consider contacting us at Closing Suite and FAN to learn about what additional resources we offer to help you meet the demands of an expanding market. Contact us today!
Please fill out form below