Common Pre-Quitting Behaviours That Indicate An Employee May Be About to Leave.

My general philosophy about employee exits is that everyone eventually leaves, and the only measure of control you have is to pro-actively design your organisation to minimise the disruption from impending exits. But to be honest, even with this mindset, a few exits are still bound to catch you off guard, particularly when it’s a highly valued star performer leaving within a short notice period.

While the unanticipated exit of a high performing employee is a nightmare for managers and business owners, over the years we’ve all developed some pattern recognition capability (an innate spider sense) that goes off when we observe certain behaviours that may be indicators that an employee is about to drop his or her exit notice. The challenge is that these behaviours are often inconsistent and can vary wildly from one individual to another.

I once had a very valuable employee significantly improve her productivity just before she announced her exit while another started wearing dressier clothes to work and humming tunes around the office.

I also had a client call last year in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak quite concerned that an employee in one of his strategic roles, who was currently working remotely had turned on the “open to work” status on his LinkedIn page.

A common pre-quitting sign in the advisory space is an employee suddenly downloading templates and other digital business tools.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had reliable pre-quitting behavioural indicators that could serve as an early warning system that an employee exit tsunami may be on the way?

While such a system may not yet exist, a few studies have been conducted to identify common behavioural traits that can serve as early indicators to help business owners and managers better mitigate the risk of disruptive staff exits. These pre-quitting behaviours are strong predictors of voluntary quits in the 12 months after they are observed by managers:

1. Their work productivity has decreased more than usual.
2. They have acted less like a team player than usual.
3. They have been doing the minimum amount of work more frequently than usual.
4. They have been less interested in pleasing their manager than usual.
5. They have been less willing to commit to long-term timelines than usual.
6. They have exhibited a negative change in attitude.
7. They have exhibited less effort and work motivation than usual.
8. They have exhibited less focus on job related matters than usual.
9. They have expressed dissatisfaction with their current job more frequently than usual.
10. They have expressed dissatisfaction with their supervisor more frequently than usual.
11. They have left early from work more frequently than usual.
12. They have lost enthusiasm for the mission of the organisation.
13. They have shown less interest in working with customers than usual.

It’s important to state that there is no guarantee that employees exhibiting any of these pre-quitting behaviours will definitely leave. The widespread adoption of remote work has also made it more difficult for managers to detect some of these pre-quitting behavioral signals.

The next logical question is what should you do when someone you manage is exhibiting these behaviours? My advice would be to conduct a ‘stay interview’, hold more regular one-on-one sessions, place the employee on special projects and focus your efforts on retaining the star employee in the short-term, while you look for a capable replacement.

Instead of just conducting exit interviews to learn what caused good employees to quit, proactively hold regular one-on-one interviews with current high-performing employees to learn what keeps them working in your organisation and what could be changed to keep them from straying. The diagram below provides some useful and tested stay interview questions.

It’s important to keep in mind that departing employees often take customers or proprietary product information with them, leaving a hole in company operations that creates long term harm, hence these retention strategies should not serve as a replacement to having proper succession plans in place. In my experience, most employee departures occur at the end or beginning of the year.

If you’re in the market for a new job? Hiding your own pre-quitting behaviours may prove difficult. Given the negative consequences of turnover, know that your managers and peers are likely watching for obvious and subtle changes in behaviour. While no single action is a dead giveaway, patterns of behaviour over time that may seem subtle to you just might tip off your manager. While I can’t deny the wisdom in being open to exploring career advancement opportunities, I strongly advise that for as long as you remain employed by an organisation, the least that is expected from you is that you stay engaged with your work, continue to show enthusiasm for the mission of the organisation, project a consistent level of commitment and work output. This is absolutely the professional thing to do.

I am sure the list of pre-quitting behaviours above is not exhaustive. It would be interesting to learn about other pre-quitting signs to look out for, do share your experience/perspective in the comment section below.