“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Groucho Marx

A mistake I see a lot of new (and not so new) managers make is worrying about their team members looking for new work or actively/passively interviewing. IME people leave organisations mostly because of bad management (lack of integrity, abuse, no transparency, low trust), but it’s also really hard to know exactly why they are leaving.

Obviously someone actively looking for a new job is a pretty good heuristic that it’s time to review your operation, but it’s not always a bad thing for either you or the person considering leaving.

I have never been threatened by people testing the market or actively looking for new work, in fact I encourage it – here’s why:

– My people should know their worth if they are going to be happiest and productive in their work. If they are constantly wondering about their street value it’s best for them to go and find out and then we can either address it or they’ll know they are being compensated fairly.

– Having a high trust environment means your folks should be able to talk to you about anything – including leaving. Sometimes if I’m at an impasse trying to help someone through a problem at work, I’ll even offer it as possible solution and encourage them to look in the market.

– IME it’s a very small world and the software testing world is even smaller than most, so building that relationship and trust with someone has only ever helped me when hiring. Sometimes I’ve even helped people prep for interviews or prepare their portfolio of work, which again builds a level of trust that isn’t ordinarily found in the workplace.

I get why a lot of people don’t feel like I do about this and the adage holds true that “if you think it’s expensive to invest in people, wait until you have to hire new ones”, but I’ve had pretty low attrition in my teams over the years and I think this approach plays a part.