If a good team member leaves, your workforce will feel the impact. Good people have good working relationships, meaning they’ll be missed by their teams and whoever they’ve had daily contact with. This will have a domino effect, impacting work productivity and focus throughout the entire company.

Humans are simple creatures. Just take a look at our basic Hierarchy of Needs. In Maslow’s famous Pyramid, we are given a definitive list of all of our basic desires necessary to achieve complete satisfaction. Once we get past having food in our belly, we move through four critical needs of fulfilment.

Safety – The need to feel safe and secure is a given; job security helps reducing anxiety and stress and could be a key driver when it comes to finding and keeping talent within your business.

Belonging – People want to belong, and they want to feel loved. Teams created, and friendships are formed giving your workforce a deep sense of belonging and the desire to feel motivated to return to work day in day out. According to Gallup, having a best friend at work, or really, a close knit of friends improves performance and increases effort. For example, women who strongly agree they have a best friend at work are twice as likely to be engaged compared to those who don’t.

Esteem – People need to have self-esteem, respect, and recognition for the work that they are doing which should be a key driver when rewarding your workforce and enhancing their sense of fulfilment.

Self-actualisation – Is the desire to realise one’s potential. This is through self-betterment books, education courses and training.

Maslow believed that to achieve personal satisfaction, the person must first satisfy the other needs (i.e., physiological, safety, belonging and esteem, in that order to have a sense of total fulfilment).

A recent study done by Investors In People found that poor management and a lack of positive company culture is driving half of the UK workforce (47%) to look for new work. This alarming figure equates to 1 in 5 people actively looking for new jobs right now. Their research also states that employee disengagement costs the UK economy £340 billion annually. If employee engagement is not a top priority, you might as well shut up shop.

With this in mind, it’s critical not to underestimate the importance of the onboarding process. New hires are most impressionable in the first two months of the job, so it’s important to make sure that their needs are met in order to make it a smooth and enjoyable transition. Get them involved in training, introduce them to their teams and other people in the office, even have their desks ready and set-up for them. Taking the small steps to make sure they feel included and welcome will motivate new employees and make them happy to stay.

People leave managers, not companies. 38% of employees would rather do unpleasant activities – like take on more work or sit next to someone who chews with their mouth open – than have a micromanaging boss. It’s both exhausting and frustrating and can lead to other undesirable behaviours on the boss’ part.

So how exactly do you combat a mass exodus from your business? Simple. Start developing an employee retention strategy. Make sure employee’s salary and benefits stay competitive, encourage a healthy work and life balance, offer self-development opportunities, and more. Do you have a list of people you can’t afford to lose? What are you doing to keep them engaged? Not having any fun at work. Even when you’re dealing with serious challenges, it doesn’t mean you have to be serious all the time. The workplace can and should be fun. It’s already too late when your top-performer walks out the door. You need to anticipate their needs and challenges before they reach a point of no return.