It’s every manager’s worst nightmare. You’ve spent ages finding and hiring the right person, years training them, and now they’re going to leave you in the lurch. As happy as you believe your team may be, given the Gallup research that found over 70 percent of U.S. workers to be unengaged at work, the odds are against you…

Losing employees is very expensive for companies, as it requires an enormous amount of additional resources to find, identify and qualify replacements.

In fact, according to research by Oxford Economics, the cost of replacing a single staff member in the UK is over £30,000

Keeping a closer eye on your employees for possible signs that they may be looking to moving on is an excellent way to prevent employee churn before it happens.

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6 Signs to watch out for

1. Dropping productivity

If an employee’s productivity drops noticeably, they may no longer be engaged with their job, and they could be looking elsewhere.

2. Change in routine

Is one of your employees suddenly taking long lunches and clocking off on the dot, when they used to work late? They may be using that extra time to seek out other opportunities.

3. Short vacations

If someone’s taking multiple single days off, there’s a high chance that they’re using that time away to go to interviews.

4. Delegating responsibilities

Is a team member suddenly devolving a lot of their day to day responsibilities to someone else? It could be because they’re getting ready to jump ship.

5. Different attitude

Any change of attitude in a staff member is always worth investigating. In some instances, it could be either because they are no longer happy or that they have already found another job.

6. Use of private email

This one is quite a big clue. If someone’s spending a lot more time than usual on their personal email at work, they’re probably sneaking out job applications.

How to get an early warning

Having advanced knowledge that one of your staff is leaving can either help you re-engage them, and avoid the issue altogether, or give you enough time to find a replacement before they leave. Of course, chances are employees who are thinking of jumping ship won’t tell you outright until they’ve secured another job.

One of the best ways to get an early warning is by using employee monitoring software. This type of software can be installed remotely on all of your company devices and can monitor employee activity – activity which includes the applications and sites they use as well as the communications they receive and send.

Any decent employee monitoring software should also measure individual employee productivity and keep track of their working hours.

It’s a great way to monitor individuals productivity, attendance and use of personal emails to check for signs they may be looking to move. You can even set up alerts for access to local job sites, excessive use of key phrases such as “job”, “career”, “CV” etc. and similar telltale indicators of a job hunt in process.

Over To You

Do you think we’ve left out other important signals from this list?

Let us know in the comments section below!