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I was recently asked the question, “What should I do to keep an employee that has quit from leaving.”
I was happy to answer the question because I have a perfect batting average as CEO of keeping employees from quitting.
That’s right. 0.00%.
Employees, in my experience, have usually made up their mind when they resign. It’s become an emotional issue, and it’s very difficult to overcome emotion. Thus my perfect batting average.
My view is simply, “Don’t let employees get to the point where they want to quit.”
Treat people well, have a great culture, give people exciting work, and employee retention goes way, way up. Here’s how we did at my company:
We unabashedly stole our company culture from Netflix with a little bit of Zappos and Sandy Koufax thrown in. We were thieves and robbers, but I’d like to think we were just being smart.
I’ve always felt you can take inspiration from many different sources, not just from your industry.
I was fortunate to be exposed to Reed Hastings’ (CEO of Netflix) wonderful culture manifesto (Culture) right after we started operations, and many parts of it resonated with me. I shared it with our executive staff, and they liked it as well.
How do Zappos and Hall of Fame Baseball Pitcher Sandy Koufax fit in? We’ll get there. For now let’s focus…
