Five Ways to Really Irritate Your Employees.

With the constraints of today's labor market, employers need to do everything in their power to attract and keep qualified employees. In fact, the most recent findings from the US Department of Labor reveal that today's unemployment rate is a mere 3.9 percent, the lowest it has been in thirty years.

Most managers and business owners mistakenly believe that the solution to eliminating employee turnover and keeping their qualified people is rooted in salary. In reality, when asked why they are unhappy in their present position, most employees cite lack of respect more often than money. Employees today want to be recognized and treated fairly. They want to know that their input matters and that upper-level managers are listening to their suggestions and implementing their ideas. When employees feel ignored or unappreciated, they will most likely quit, thus affecting not only your company's productivity but also its bottom line.

The fact is that it costs employers approximately one-third of a new hire's salary to replace an employee. Using an average salary of $40,000, a company can easily spend $13,200 for each new employee hired. These costs include everything from advertising and headhunter fees to management's time involved in recruitment, selection and training. Add to that any overtime expenses incurred as current employees pick up the slack until the new hire is up to speed.

If you want to keep more employees on staff and reduce your recruitment costs, you must learn how to listen to your employees, so you know precisely what they want. A recent survey of 250 business professionals, conducted by The Hampton Group, uncovered the five most common listening habits that irritate employees. By practicing these listening habits on a daily basis, you are guaranteed to annoy your employees and make your employee retention rates plummet.

# 1

Irritating Habit #1 -- Interrupt your employees when they speak.

One way to guarantee that you will irritate employees is to interrupt them when they are speaking. When you interrupt the speaker, you are taking the focus away from his or her message. Essentially, you are telling the person that her ideas don't really matter, and there are more important issues to deal with. If you are constantly interrupting your employees, they will soon become frustrated and leave your employ.