Why did 4 people leave the company in half a year?
The head of a design office in Poznań's Jeżyce called us in July 2024. He was downcast because in just 26 weeks he lost 4 key employees from a 9-person team. He was left alone with a mountain of projects, deadlines chasing him like mad dogs, and empty chairs where people with 5 years of seniority sat not long ago.
Signals that the boss missed over morning coffee
The office owner, Mr. Marek, thought everything was fine because no one came with complaints about a raise. However, the truth was different and much more painful for his wallet. People were not leaving for the competition for better money, because we checked it carefully – their new salaries were higher by only 340-480 PLN gross. These are not amounts for which one throws away a stable job close to home. The real problem was the lack of any specifics when allocating tasks. Employees felt like they were in a fog, and every attempt to ask for details ended with a short: 'You know what to do, don't bother me'.
When we sat down to analyze these 4 departures, it came to light that the last person, Ms. Kasia, submitted her resignation after waiting for 3 days for approval of a simple technical drawing. Marek was busy with meetings in town then and simply forgot to reply to the email. For Kasia, this was a signal that her work didn't matter. Without beating around the bush: it was a classic death by disregard. People are not Excel spreadsheets that can be closed and opened after a week without consequences. Here, every hour of the boss's silence built a wall of resentment that finally collapsed on the entire project.
The atmosphere in the office was one of 'guessing what the author meant'. Instead of a clear list of priorities for a given week, the team received chaotic commands thrown on Messenger at 9:30 PM on a Sunday. One of the people who left in March admitted to us later that she stopped sleeping peacefully because of these messages. We check facts, not promises: during those 6 months, the boss's average response time to substantive questions was 47 hours. That's 43 hours too long if you want to maintain the pace of work in a small, efficient company.
People rarely leave work just for money. Most often they run away from a boss who doesn't have time to answer them.
The legend of low earnings and the brutal reality
Marek insisted at first that he just had to give everyone a 1,200 PLN raise and the problem would disappear. This is the most common mistake of bosses who want to buy themselves peace instead of fixing the work culture. We did an anonymous survey among the remaining 5 employees and the results shocked him. Only 1 person indicated remuneration as the main stress factor. The other 4 complained that they didn't know if they were performing their duties well because the only feedback they get is shouting when a client files a complaint. Straight talk for the board: money is just a band-aid on the open wound of a lack of communication.
Analyzing the departure of Tomek, who was Marek's right hand for 4 years, we noticed a strange pattern. Tomek left on May 12, exactly three days after Marek publicly criticized him in front of interns for a calculation error that he himself had previously approved. It was a 47-minute meeting that destroyed trust built over years. In small companies, such situations echo for months. No one wants to work in a place where the boss's mistakes become the employee's fault. It wasn't a matter of a transfer to an account, but of elementary respect that cannot be converted into cash.
We proposed an experiment to Marek: instead of 'blind' raises, we introduced a bonus system based on specific delivered stages, and not on the boss's whim. To this, we added one rule: we discuss errors only in private, never in front of the team. The effect? Within the first 11 days, the atmosphere in the kitchen while making coffee changed beyond recognition. People stopped whispering in corners and started talking to each other normally. This shows that order in relationships is worth more than a discretionary bonus thrown once a quarter without a word of explanation.
Information chaos as a silent motivation killer
In the office on Półwiejska, the problem was not a lack of work, but an excess of it with zero organization. Each of the 4 employees who left had an average of 14 open threads on their desk simultaneously. Without priorities, everything seems urgent, which leads to rapid burnout. We checked that in May the team sent 83 questions to Marek regarding project blockages. Only 19 of them received an answer. The rest got stuck in a vacuum, and employees had to improvise, risking errors and the boss's anger. It's a vicious circle where the only way out is to quit.
We introduced a simple 'dashboard' rule. Every Monday at 9:15 is now 20 minutes of specifics: what we are doing, what is standing, what is missing from the boss. No fluff, no visionary speeches about the future of the industry. Only hard data for the given week. Marek had to learn that his role is not to be the 'smartest in the room', but to remove obstacles from the path of his people. Since then, the number of internal emails has dropped by 31%, because most doubts are clarified on the spot during this short meeting.
The most glaring example of chaos was the departure of Ania, a detail specialist. Ania was in the company for 18 months and left because she had to correct the same project three times in a row because Marek changed his mind halfway through the work, forgetting to inform her. Wasting time is the greatest insult to a professional. When we calculated the costs of these corrections, it came to 4,300 PLN thrown down the drain in just one month. This is money that could have gone to training or integration, but went to fixing errors resulting from pure decision-making mess.
The boss's lack of decision is the most expensive cost in any small company. It costs time, money, and the best people.
Three simple changes introduced in 14 days
We started fixing this situation from the basics. The first change was to set an 'hour for the boss'. Every day between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM Marek has his phone off and is available only for his team. Anyone can come in and talk through blockages. The second change was the introduction of a project card – a simple 1-page document where the client's expectations and the delivery date are written in black and white. No more guessing and looking for information in old SMS messages. These are banal solutions, but in a design office they saved the remnants of morale that were still flickering there.
The third change was the most difficult: Marek had to start saying thank you. Not for big successes, but for daily, reliable work. We introduced a 'fact of the day' rule – once a week, on Friday at 3:00 PM, the boss sends a short email to everyone with one thing he liked in each of their work that week. Without beating around the bush, honestly and specifically. At first it seemed artificial, but after 3 weeks people started to look forward to these emails. This showed them that the boss sees their effort, and not just errors in tables.
The end result? Since August 2024, no one else has left the company. The team of 5 people that remained became more efficient than the previous 9-person crew. Why? Because they know what to do, and they know that their voice is heard. Marek regained his peace, and we proved that work culture is not about expensive fruit Thursdays, but about clear rules and mutual respect. If chairs are starting to empty in your office too, don't look for the fault in the labor market. First, look at your calendar and how much time you devote to real support for your people.
