It’s not them, it’s you. The REAL reason your best employees quit.

There’s an old saying, “People leave managers, not companies.” If you have high turnover, maybe you or your managers are to blame. Make changes before you lose the best of your staff.

Here are 4 reasons your top talent are brushing up their resumes:

Your employees don’t feel respected.

If you don’t have time to talk, don’t actively listen or brush off their concerns you a sending a strong signal that their opinions don’t matter. From there, it’s a short leap for employees to conclude that they don’t matter. John Pettit of CUInsight says, “The more detached you are from your employees personally, the more employees you’ll have to eventually replace.”

You’re not a resource. You’re a roadblock.

Staff expect a manager to offer solutions when they encounter a problem that they cannot solve. Managers who refuse to help but expect results anyway put employees in an impossible situation. Be someone they can count on to help them rather than someone who rolls heads when things don’t go as expected.

Your default answer is no.

When employees suggest a change is your first response no? Sean McDonald of Your Full Potential says, “There are only so many times that a person can be rejected before they start to question whether or not they’re in the right place.” Not every change is necessary or even a good idea, but if your response to all of them is flat refusal, you’re creating a work environment that’s stuck in a rut. Your true visionaries will go, leaving you with the least talented of your staff.

You fear creativity.

Marketing expert Seth Godin calls creative leaders unicorns. These rare talents are the drivers behind change that shapes industries. Yet Godin says many by-the-book style managers fear them. Unicorns want to do things differently. Unicorns ruin the established process. Unicorns don’t do things, “the way they’ve always been done.” If you fear the unicorns in your organization, you’re driving away the very people who establish how your job will be done in the future, while the “tried and true” organizations slowly die out in the face of change — change that is brought about by the very unicorns you drove away.