The Attrition Advantage Use - Don't Shoot - The Messenger

Voluntary attrition is not just valuable as an indicator that the organization’s health is stressed but it can yield substantive benefits too

- Visty Banaji

It’s been a long time since I heard this fable by Aesop (when people didn’t think it was a misspelt Employee Stock Option Plan), so I may have a few details wrong. There was a stag called Techmajor who stood admiring himself in the pool of public perception. He was the proudest of his antlers, one of which he named 'foreign' and the other he named 'postings'. But he was ashamed of his four legs which he derisively called Vo, La, Tree and Shun. He went to Dr. Comp, an orthopedic surgeon, and paid lots of money to get his legs cut shorter. One day a lion called Business Downturn (no more names, I promise) started chasing Techmajor. He ran as fast as his now shortened legs could carry him. Unfortunately, his antlers got caught in a trump tree (well, just one more) and he became lion protein.

The point is not to glorify voluntary attrition and never seek to curb it. But if it is simply suppressed before mature people managing processes are in place, artificially lowered attrition can make the organization’s health worse instead of better. As we shall see, during this phase of immature people systems, letting attrition continue may not be such a bad idea after all.

Attrition is the Symptom – Not the Disease