I have been working since I was 16 years old and have never voluntarily quit a job without having a new one lined up. Several positions, like lifeguarding at the local Country Club, simply ended. Others were tied to my time at Mississippi State University. I quit one to move back to North Mississippi right before I got married, and I left a couple of jobs for more pay and benefits, but in those cases, I had a better opportunity “in my pocket.”

People leave jobs for many reasons without having something else lined up. Typically, this is due to working conditions (real or perceived), poor leadership, or a combination of both. It is rarely about pay because why go from some pay to no income if compensation is the issue? Truthfully, poor working conditions are most often a product of poor leadership - and that is a blog post unto itself. I will cover that topic at a later date. Not all jobs are - or should be - rainbows and lollipops all the time. If you work for a living, you will face stress and challenges. That is normal. However, some leaders either ignore obvious problems or, in some cases, contribute to problems in the workplace. Leadership development training can address poor leadership and improve working conditions.

Regarding employees who don’t maintain the required skillset to succeed. I spent most of my adult career in the software industry, where technology changes daily, not monthly or yearly. I saw employees who seemed brilliant when they started to become less valuable because their skills did not continue to evolve. Consider this: a good Pascal, Fortran, or Cobol programmer was very valuable in 1984, but if they simply hung their hat on that skill and never expanded their knowledge to languages like C, C++, and Perl, then later to JavaScript, PHP, and Python, they became obsolete as a programmer, except to maintain the few old programs that took years to replace.

It doesn’t just happen in the technology world. Every job has changed over the years. A few companies do an excellent job of offering ongoing, quality professional development and training to employees, but many do not. Professional development education helps employees stay current and valuable in their roles.

Is that failure to keep up the fault of the employee? Maybe. Is it the fault of leadership? Again, the answer is maybe. Leaders must encourage and support ongoing career and skill development. But the employee must also be willing to accept that things change rapidly, and they must continue their education, learning, growing, developing, and perfecting new skills.

I have seen employees quit, retire early, or even get terminated because they refused to learn new skills that would have allowed them to bring value to the company. I have also seen employees wanting to learn new skills to be valuable and productive, but the employer would not make that investment.

Time management training for employees can help them balance learning new skills with their job responsibilities. Employees often quit to either find a place where they can use their current skill set or find a place that will enhance their current skill set. Employers cannot do much about the first, but they must protect against the second.

Replacing an employee who refuses to upgrade his or her skills is a simple decision if the employer encourages and supports continuing education. Replacing employees who are not allowed or encouraged to upgrade their skills is never cost-effective.

In summary, there is greater value in investing in current employees – provided they want to learn and grow – than spending money to replace them with new employees who may or may not work out from the start. Invest in knowledge.