Identifying when an employee may pack up and leave

Signs an employee is about to up and leave can be subtle and completely under your radar. Or, the warning signs are blatantly obvious. Unfortunately for the health, medical, and social services sectors, lives and service delivery can be at risk when the performance, health or well-being of employees is not to standard. Therefore, it’s important to address the instincts of resignation or patterns in behavior changes as soon as possible.

Whether you’ve sensed it or not, the following points may help you figure out if they’re or the move or not.

• Appearance - are they as sharp, tidy, and appropriate as they should be or normally are? Are they compliant with your organisations uniform or dress code policies?
• Punctuality - are their patterns in clock-in times or rosters where late starts or early finishes are happening more regularly?
• Commitment - Likewise, are they taking more leave than usual?
• Performance - Are mistakes and slip-ups occurring? Or are they less productive, achieving less than usual?
• Attitude - has there been a shift in their willingness to help out or pick up extra work, participate in projects, or help out others in the organisation? Are they lacking the same energy and enthusiasm they used to have? Or, are they showing poor interaction and cohesion within the team?
• Health - Burnout is an ongoing concern in the health, medical, and social services sectors, and indicators of burnout can be recognised as changes or signs of any of the points above. Read more about burnout here.

Often it boils down to changes in their behavior. The good news is that if you catch on to this early enough and address it, there may be some areas you can work around and accommodate to keep them engaged. For more about retaining your people, click here.

Sometimes the time has come to part ways, if they’re not the right culture fit for your organisation, ideally come to a mutual and planned agreement to let them get on with their job search. Either way, having a conversation demonstrates that you value the person and care about their wellbeing. There is often an opportunity to work around any issues and move forward positively.

Take away tip! Have regular, planned conversations around topics such as weekly one-on-ones and quarterly reviews.   These are opportunities to address both performance (including positive performance and areas for improvement), and check-ins on your team members' wellbeing, engagement and overall commitment to the organisation's values and outcome expectations.