TED Talks are a great way to learn about new developments in your industry and smarter ways of working. We’ve spent 10 hours hunting down the best TED Talks for social media marketers—so you don’t have to.

In this post, you’ll find TED Talks that will teach you how to:

• Make your ideas spread (from one of the world’s best marketers)
• Understand why certain types of video go viral with insights from YouTube’s trends manager, Kevin Allocca
• Find more free time and balance in your schedule with smarter time management

Continue reading for a list of our favorite TED Talks that can make you a better social media marketer.

1.3 Ways to Usefully Lose Control of Your Brand

Strategist and author Tim Leberecht opens his TED Talk with the quote “Your brand is what other people say about you when you aren’t in the room.”

He explains that brands need to come to terms with the fact that they have little power over their own reputation and “if you’re relevant, there’s a constant, free-form conversation happening about you that you have no control over.”

According to Leberecht, there are three ways businesses can positively lose control of their brands and create more meaningful experiences for their customers:

1. Give people more control. This means trusting your employees and your customers to collaborate towards better solutions.
2. Give people less control (and more meaning.) Trust is earned by predictable behavior, so this is a wonderful way to counter the abundance of choice customers face every day.
3. Be transparent. Staying true to the brand’s self is the only true value proposition. As Leberecht says, “Openness is paramount but radical openness is not a solution.” He suggests each brand find the level of transparency that works for them.

2. How Better Tech Can Prevent Us From Distraction

Design thinker Tristan Harris wants to figure out how technology can help us avoid distraction and spend our time more efficiently.

Harris shares his ideas surrounding the notion of choice. As he explains, “We want to have a relationship with technology that gives us back choice about how we spend time with it.”

The constant interruptions involved in work and life cause serious harm to attention spans, and Harris wants to show how technology can fix this.

Harris’ theories focus on one core metric: net positive contribution to human life. He calls for a world where all designers are first and foremost asking themselves how their creations will positively impact the lives of real human beings.

Social media marketers need to be constantly thinking about how their content is creating more meaningful interactions and, with Harris’ philosophy, this can become top of mind.

3. How to gain control of your free time

If you’re a social media marketer you might be scoffing and asking, “What free time?” Time management expert Laura Vanderkam has your back. She believes successful time management is not about finding more hours in the day, but about figuring out where your priorities lie.

Her ideas hinge on the importance of work-life balance and helping people find time for what matters most. Vanderkam provides two key steps for figuring out exactly what your priorities are. You can apply this approach to any areas of your life, whether it be your social strategy or your personal growth.

1. Pretend you are one year in the future. Write next year’s performance review as if you are looking back on the year. What were the things that made it so amazing? What did you accomplish? When you know what a successful year looks like to you, it’s easier to carve a path in advance.
2. Break down your goals into doable steps. Treat these goals as priorities, and put them into your schedule. Make a three category list including career, relationship, and self-improvement goals, and see where you can make time to work on these.

Concentrating on your social media efforts is difficult when you feel strapped for time and under pressure. Apply Vanderkam’s approach to your work and personal life to find “small moments with great power.”

4. The nit-picking glory of The New Yorker’s Comma Queen

Social media marketers know the importance of writing and editing. One typo can change your content’s meaning and distract from your message. Nobody knows this better than the New Yorker’s copy editor, Mary Norris.

In her TED Talk, Norris explains the level of detail that goes into copy editing and the processes surrounding the art. When this process is rushed or ignored, the copy editor’s work is at the mercy of public critics.

Social media marketers understand this pressure well. With every tweet and Instagram caption you write, there’s always the terrifying possibility of a glaring typo or grammatical error. Explore the ways Norris has made peace with her work—and how you can too.

5. Adventures in Twitter fiction

While the art of storytelling hasn’t wavered, the chosen format has evolved. Hearst Magazine’s chief digital content officer Andrew Fitzgerald (previously Twitter Moments Editor) explores the ways microblogging platforms like Twitter are changing the landscape of media and content sharing.

Fitzgerald is most interested in how “creative people are experimenting with the bounds of what is possible in this medium.” As a social media marketer, telling your brand’s story within the confines of each platform’s limits is a constant challenge.

If you’re tweeting, using Instagram Stories, or posting to Snapchat, real-time storytelling is something you need to consider. Fitzgerald explores the blurring between fact and fiction, real and digital worlds, and the tools we have available to us in our search for creative experimentation. Watch his TED Talk for inspiration and examples surrounding these ideas.

6. How to get your ideas to spread

If you want your audience to take action, you need to find a way to get your ideas to spread. Author Seth Godin walks audience members through a series of examples where seemingly simple concepts have spread like wildfire.

According to Godin, brands need to find a group that cares about what they have to say. Talk to them. And then make it easy for them to want to tell their friends.

As Godin says, “It’s really simple—you sell to the people who are listening, and just maybe, those people tell their friends.”

7. Why videos go viral

Nobody knows the answer to this better than YouTube’s trends manager, Kevin Allocca. If you’re a social media marketer looking to get your video content in front of a bigger audience, you’ll want to take note of Allocca’s three key reasons a video goes viral:

1. The influence of tastemakers—The people who are influencing their audience and seen as authorities in the industry have huge power. For more on influencer marketing, check out our post Influencer Marketing on Social Media: Everything You Need to Know.
2. Community participation—It’s key that your content inspires some sort of reaction from your audience. Read more about creating engaging content with our post How to Use Social Media to Engage With Customers and Build Your Brand.
3. Unexpectedness—Branded content can get boring fast. Keep your audience engaged and constantly surprised by providing unexpected content on the regular. Learn more with our post How Big Brands Are Using Humor on Social Media (and Why You Should Too).

TED Talks are a great way for any social media marketer to discover new ways of approaching their craft. Take a look at the ones above, and let us know of any others you have found valuable.

Jack Welch, the legendary former chairman and CEO of General Electric, nailed it when he told the Kansas City Business Journal, “There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow.”

It’s a good bet that if Welch were to boil this down to just one measurement, he’d emphatically opt for employee engagement, because that’s where it all begins.

In the “Engagement Economy,” employee engagement is the tip of the spear. Done right, engagement is a continuum of goodwill, value and reciprocity. Think about it: employees -> customers -> prospects -> partners -> shareholders. If your employees are not engaged, you’re stuck in the starting gate.

Author Sybil F. Stershic (“Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care”) writes, “The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.”

The fact is, whether employees or customers, people want to be understood and valued, they need to connect, and they like being part of something bigger than themselves. These are fundamental human desires, baked into our DNA.

We don’t function at full capacity unless we’re engaged — at least, not for long — and that holds true at work as well as at play. When not engaged, we tend to mentally check out, just go through the motions or drift to the sidelines, the competition or a new job.

The state of employee engagement: Not good

How does one measure employee engagement? Start with something that looks similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

But instead of showing fundamental human needs, take a look at different levels of employee engagement. At the bottom of our employee-engagement pyramid are the clock-watching not engaged and disengaged who are there just for the money.

In the middle are the almost engaged who are proud to work at the company but could be tempted to go elsewhere. And topping the hierarchy are the engaged and highly engaged who feel they are vital parts of the business, love working there and strive to inspire others. It’s not hard to see in which categories you want the bulk of your employees to be.

So, how are organizations in general doing on maximizing employee engagement and lifting their people to higher levels? The short answer is, “not well.”

Seventy percent of US employees are not engaged at work, meaning they are not involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work, according to a 2017 Gallup report. Evidently, this figure has not changed much in recent years.

Meanwhile, The State of Engagement (registration required), a new study that Marketo conducted with a third-party research firm, shows that, while 71 percent of global companies have an engagement strategy specifically for employees, only 26 percent of employees say employers are exceeding their expectations for engagement.

Clearly, there’s work to be done.

4 steps for moving the employee engagement needle

From my perspective, employee engagement is not a nicety. It’s an imperative. As marketers, we have to be able to practice what we preach, which means creating a culture of engagement inside our own organizations.

Based on my experience, here are the four must-take steps for any organization looking to create such a culture.

So does it work?

When my organization followed the steps above, did they lead to success? Absolutely. We can now measure engagement through employee activities, and since the launch of our engagement platform earlier this year, have seen our number of highly engaged employees climb significantly. I think Jack Welch would be impressed.

What’s even more impressive is that this kind of employee engagement is achievable within almost any organization that puts its mind to it and makes the investment.

As for those that don’t, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It’s time we talked about how you’re using social media. That’s right, this is an intervention.

We’re concerned about what you’re doing, and more importantly what you’re not doing.

Your lack of adoption of new channels.

Your total disrespect of mobile first users.

Your reluctance to try video.

Your fear of spending money on social ads.

Your results.

We’re concerned.

We bring up these concerns out of love for you and all of our B2B clients out there. You see, social media marketing has changed, but most social media marketers haven’t. You’re confused, you think the social media landscape is just for consumer driven businesses.

A modern social strategy is light-years away from the definition we used in 2012 and it’s time to adapt.

Adapt to a mobile first, video obsessed audience.

Adapt to new tactics that take advantage of new tools.

Adapt how we measure success and what we’re trying to achieve.

This isn’t a matter of making tweaks, we need to start over.

Why do we need a new start?

Things have changed — and that all starts with Facebook.

Flash back to 2012 with me for a moment. It was an eventful year: we were all watching Gangnam Style on our iPad 3’s, mourning the loss of Whitney Houston, and eagerly awaiting the Facebook IPO. An IPO that we were excited but unsure about.

It wasn’t clear at all in 2012 that Facebook had a viable business model. Investors were concerned if they could actually monetize. After the first few months of their IPO their stock was down and the future looked grim.

The fact that this was only 5 years ago Facebook seems ludicrous. Today Facebook is one of the fastest growing, most well known, most trusted, and most valuable companies in the world. Its only rivals may be Apple and Google.

Facebook’s success as a business is directly related to their success in mobile. In 2012 Mobile represented only 10% of Facebook’s revenue, today it accounts for 82%. They were able to move with users from desktop to mobile and create a totally new stream of revenue that corresponded with a big shift in consumer behavior.

This success has allowed Facebook to expand, given them the means to buy Instagram and WhatsApp, and spend time developing new products like Messenger.

The average person globally now spends 50 minutes a day with Facebook.

…there are only 24 hours in a day, and the average person sleeps for 8.8 of them. That means more than one-sixteenth of the average user’s waking time is spent on Facebook.  – New York Times

These new products are big bets that they hope will have the same impact on their business as their shift to mobile did for them back in 2012. Below is Facebook’s ten year road map. An astonishingly ambitious plan to create multiple new products and revenue streams, most notably around messaging, video, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.

Facebook has never been more important than now. They are innovating incredibly fast and changing the meaning of social media. It’s critical to figure out how your audience lives in Facebook (Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp) because they are there, everyone on the planet is. Once you do figure out how you can use the tools Facebook offers to connect with them.

The Trends: New Channels, Video, Mobile, Ads, AI

There are five major trends that are defining this next wave of social media.

1) New Channels

One of Facebook’s most recent hits is Facebook Messenger. It’s one of a handful of new channels, along with Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat that’s dominating time spent on social.

In 2012 Social Media was the big three: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. That’s it. Your goal was to engage and grow communities on these channels via desktop. The idea was to gain enough likes and followers so that you had a reliable distribution channel for your content.

Today, your audience may still be there, but there are many other places as well.

Social media usage hasn’t slowed down one bit since 2012, it’s grown and diversified.

You must know your audience and you must focus your efforts on the networks that are most relevant for them.

To make this happen, the role of the social media manager / marketer needs expand. They need to understand your target market, and whatever social channel they spend time in. That probably includes Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, but it’s now expanded to new networks like Instagram, SnapChat, Reddit, YouTube, WhatsApp, and more.

They should know how those networks work and be able to create the content that does best in those channels. This means that social media marketers need to be experts in ads, creating video, stories, messaging bots, and more.

Furthermore, their goal shouldn’t be to try to turn these places into a distribution channel. Instagram for instance isn’t interested in having users leave their app. They’ve made it hard for marketers to drive people from their app to a landing page without an ad.

A modern social media marketing strategy doesn’t try to drive people out of these sites, they turn these sites into a conversion funnel in and of themselves. They create amazing content that brings attention and use ads and technology to convert those users in network. No landing pages, no emails. This is true for all networks now, not just Instagram. More on this later.

2) Video

Instagram was one of the first totally visually focused social networks, at first it was almost all pictures. Its massive success served as a spark for the rest of the industry. Quickly other social networks started leaning away from text into images, and that trend continued to evolve towards video.

We all now have super computers in our pockets with strong wifi and cellular networks. This makes hosting, sharing, and serving video a fast, enjoyable experience.

The result is that video has become the currency of social media.

People want video. You may have noticed how much more video you’re seeing in your Facebook and LinkedIn feeds — expect more.

This may have impacted you, but for even younger audiences social has totally replaced TV. They still want to consume video and now these cord-cutters turn directly to YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook to get it.

All of this has already happened. It’s not new. This means if you haven’t figured out how your company or brand can produce relevant video you must act now or risk becoming irrelevant. Producing video should be something you add to your personal repertoire, but isn’t easy, and unlike blogging a bad product can hurt your brand and image. If you can’t do it yourself, get help. Lean on good freelancers or hire folks with experience to guide the way and help you build your video strategy and production arm.

Video should be part of all your marketing campaigns. It can be live, pre-produced, casual, or polished. You’ll figure out what works for your audience, but you have to get started now if you haven’t already. An easy way to figure out what to create is to always ask, “What’s the video element?” about every single marketing campaign your team creates. Once you get started start reviewing the data. Focus on metrics like watch time over views, and let that be your guide to decide what’s working.

3) Mobile

You, me, and everyone else in the world have relatively cheap, extremely powerful, mobile phones in our pockets. Wifi is now everywhere, and 4G networks can be found in all corners of the globe. This has made accessing the internet and consuming content on mobile much easier. And it turns out that as long as the experience is good, people prefer using their mobile device for everything.

A result of this is that social media is now almost all mobile. 80% of social usage now comes from mobile devices. Social media is growing like crazy and almost all of it is coming from mobile first or mobile only users. That’s right: some users in some regions only access the internet from their mobile device. How are you going to reach those users?

Obviously it’s important to know your own audiences trends, but the short story is your marketing should now also be mobile first. Assume that the majority of people you engage with or want to reach in social are coming from their mobile phone.

For most B2B marketers this is a hard pill to swallow. The school of thought is that mobile marketing doesn’t work for B2B. That mobile users on the go aren’t interested in a long white paper like someone accessing it from a desktop would be. And that forms with several fields turn off mobile users.

Those concerns are valid and true, but it doesn’t mean mobile marketing doesn’t work for B2B, it just means we need to change our tactics — and Facebook is eager to help.

Recently Facebook introduced Lead Ads, and they can become your mobile marketing strategy. There aren’t many shortcuts in marketing or life, but Facebook’s created a big one with Lead Ads.

The ad unit brings your content to users on the Facebook mobile app and Instagram. Its format allows you to feature your lead gen content, and a strong call to action. This is all great, but the magic comes after a user clicks on the ads CTA, they are served a form that is auto populated with their information by Facebook.

This dramatically increases conversion rates. We’ve seen this totally flip the script for some marketers. They are now actually getting a better cost-per lead at a higher conversion rate from their mobile campaigns vs. desktop.

Another great option for converting mobile users is Facebook Messenger. HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar recently wrote, “Facebook Messenger will be the next great marketing channel, and it is arguably the best way to engage with the Facebook community as a marketer.”

Step one is encouraging users to start conversations via messenger. There are lots of reasons why a customer or prospect would want to chat with you via Messenger. Maybe it’s to aid communications at an event you’re hosting, or perhaps to deal with a customer service question.

Whatever the reason, it’s a good idea to start doing it. Having access to people via messaging means have a direct, mobile first channel to people. In a world where people are ignoring email and spending the majority of their time on their phone in a Facebook property, this will be important. Start building a plan for how you can start messenger conversations now.

4) Social Ads

Most people would agree that a modern social media marketing strategy has to incorporate video and mobile, but do you have to use ads? The answer now is yes.

You don’t have to always be running ads or use them for every campaign. But if you can’t effectively use paid media to amplify your inbound marketing strategy, you’re going to lose to the competition.

Earlier I mentioned we are now in a world where pushing people off of social to your site to convert no longer works. That means ads are your main path to conversion in social now. Before you grab your pitchfork and start chanting “pay to play is wrong” let me say this: a good social ad strategy will make you way more money than it will ever cost you, and will help you compete with much larger businesses.

You also don’t need to have a massive budget to be successful. Ads can be easily scaled up and down, so when you figure out the right conversion path and reach profitability, dial things up.

All of the major social networks are aggressively trying to monetize their audiences. Most of them have been for awhile. Those monetization efforts started with exciting marketing solutions for big consumer focused brands, and they work.

Now Facebook and the others are looking for new audiences to build for. If you’re reading this you’re probably a B2B marketer who doesn’t work at a Fortune 500 company. That’s a great place to be if you want to start using ads.

Facebook and LinkedIn both now have great lead generation solutions built for a mobile audience. This is a big opportunity — and one you don’t want to miss out on. It’s important to build a strong social media advertising muscle now. Ads don’t have to be part of every campaign, but you should always consider it.

When you do decide to use ads, use them in conjunction with inbound. An ad that is only an ad is boring and disruptive. But an ad powered by great content that is part of a well targeted inbound campaign is something your audience will welcome.

5) Artificial Intelligence 

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are ideas that marketers are chomping at the bit to put to work. But the question that hasn’t been answered is how? Social Media and Social Ads are the answer.

No other marketing channel has grasped AI like social. It defines what content you see, what ads you’re served, and how you engage with your friends. In many ways AI defines social, and it’s important to keep this in mind when creating content. There is no more optimizing for time of day or keywords in social, everything is defined by a machine learning algorithm specific to individuals. When you’re thinking about content try to think like the machines.

Facebook and others have now made the same AI that powers what content is shown to whom, available to better target your ads. When you run Facebook ads for instance, you have a powerful tool set of AI at your fingertips, even if they don’t make that obvious. Leaning on Facebook to target and optimize your ads is a very good idea.

Upload lists of your most valuable customers or highest priority prospect to Facebook and then implement Lookalike Audiences. With this data Facebook will put its AI to work by combining with their global user data to serve your ads to only the most valuable people.

Look, things are different. Facebook has changed the world, mobile and video are here to stay, ads are they way forward, and it’s time to leverage AI. But for all the change that has happened, inbound is still the way forward.

The best marketing will always be remarkable and focused on attracting people with the quality of its substance. And for all the advanced technology we have, the best marketing will still always be about people and personal connections.

No technology can replace the feeling someone gets when they feel like you’re talking only to them. It’s important to root everything you do in those concepts. It’s time to grasp these new concepts, tools, and tactics. If you can combine them with the fundamentals of inbound marketing, there is no stopping you.

At Brantley, we’re experienced in managing social media.  We think about social media strategically:  planning your posts, getting your approval, and then posting them for you.  We can even handle engagement if you wish.  It doesn’t get any easier.  Use the form below to reach out and we’ll be happy to discuss options and get you a custom quote.  We’d love to hear from you.

Running your online presence can be a big task, particularly for a young construction or architecture business where you need to devote most of your time to actually doing the work. While many business owners think they can take on running a website and social media on their own, the truth is that it will often hurt your business more than help it.

You’ve got options though. In today’s world, the management of online presence has become a field in its own right, drawing many talented individuals. You’ve got three ways you can work with these specialists – hire them into your business, hire them on a freelance basis, or work with an agency.

Each of these three methods has its pros and cons, and in the end one of them rises above as being more suitable for small and mid-size construction businesses. So let’s look at these pros and cons…

Internal Staff

Wouldn’t it be great to have a dedicated team on hand, ready to move on whatever project needs to be done? They would become part of your internal culture, be invested in your company, and would get back to you right away. They would always be available, and you would have complete control of their schedule. Need more work done? Just approve overtime, or hire someone else!

Internal staff is the way to go if you want the utmost control of your marketing message. It also allows for extensive collaboration, bouncing ideas off of each other, and great brainstorming opportunities. You’ll be able to train potential managers for the future, groom the future of your business.

They would also be prohibitively expensive for a small- to mid-size business. For every employee, you’ll have to provide a competitive package, including insurance and benefits. You’ll have to deal with their taxes, and they still will require a high level of management. You get complete control, with the catch that you need to be there providing supervision on all projects. Are you equipped to manage a marketing professional? For a business owner with a lot of balls to juggle, this is just adding one more to the bunch.

On top of all that, there’s the issue of capital investment – you’ll need to purchase or rent the equipment they need, a list that can become rather lengthy if you want audio or video components to your web presence. When this equipment needs to be updated or replaced in a few years’ time, you’ll have to shell out once again. The overhead cost of internal staff is its downfall.

Finally, sometimes companies are tempted to try and hire a small staff that can do it all – one or two people to do tasks that range far and wide. Don’t do this! If you try and get one or two “jacks of all trades” and heap all of the work on them, they will be stretched thin and burned out in no time at all.

Freelancers

Freelancers often seem like a great choice for businesses who want little or no involvement with their online presence. They generally come cheaper than the other two options, with the ability to seek lowest bidders. You don’t have to keep them on payroll when they aren’t in use, and you aren’t responsible for paying any sort of taxes for them.

Unlike internal staff, there is little to no overhead involved in utilizing freelancers. Each freelancer needs to supply their own specialized equipment to fulfill the task you award them. Cameras, lighting, software, none of it comes out of your pocket. All you need is a computer to put the final units together into your comprehensive website.

Unfortunately, wrangling a team of freelancers can be difficult. They need a lot of management, and quality control falls to you. If you aren’t specific and cautious, you can end up shelling out for bad workmanship and the freelancer disappearing. Many freelancers gravitate towards freelancing because of the flexibility it offers, but this can lead to limited availability and poor response times.

They won’t share your vision, and there may even be conflicting interpretations in the work they return to you. They all have their own methods of execution, and may not feel responsible if their methods end up hurting someone else’s product or deadline. Their mercenary nature means that some may jump ship to chase another offer with little to no notice, leaving you hanging.

So sure, the lack of internal cost is a bright spot for freelancing. You may even find some high-quality freelancers who end up working well, and who are solid contributors. But wouldn’t you like to have a bit more control over those working on your website or day-to-day marketing, along with set-in-stone reliability? What’s cheap is not always necessarily good, and a bad website can be worse than no website at all. You’ll still need someone on staff at your business who has a good sense of your marketing needs to coordinate, unless you want to pilot the ship alone.

Digital Agencies

It’s always good to have a middle ground, and that’s where digital agencies come in. They take bits and pieces of the previous two methods and combine them into a convenient package.

You may not have the same level of investment into your internal culture, but agencies have their own cultures. Finding one that jives with your company’s culture shouldn’t be too difficult. Running your account at a digital agency would be a devoted account manager, someone who would get back to you in minutes with a response, or at least let you know they are working on whatever your need may be. You won’t have to potentially wait until two days later, like you may have to with a freelancer.

You’ll also have a raft of experts on hand when you need them. You don’t have to go out and hire someone, or find a freelancer. The agency will have someone who can fulfill the task that needs to be done. You don’t have to worry about complex benefit and payroll either – you pay the agency their flat rate, and they deal with all the nitpicky paperwork. There’s no overhead for you, and you only pay when you need it.

Some project management responsibilities will still fall to you if you work with a digital agency, but nothing like with the other two options. We’re talking minutes of your day, not hours or an entire shift. You’ll be working with marketing experts who have spent years working in the industry, and who have honed their skills over time. They will need focused but minimal input, and they will need feedback from you over the course of the projects. But for the most part, you will just point them in the right direction and sit back to await the results.

Of course, we here at Brantley think digital agencies are the best option. After all, we are one. But even looking at the options objectively, it’s clear that for the vast majority of small and medium-size construction or contracting firms a digital agency is the best option. Why?

• You want the best possible product, at the right price.
• You want creativity and originality, devotion to the details, and content that is superior.
• You want a one-stop solution.
• You want an efficient, unified effort towards the goals of your business.
• You want cost-effectiveness.

So when you are ready to let a digital marketing agency take the reins and help your business solidify itself in the online world, reach out to us here at Brantley. We will help you get that competitive edge to grow into the future.

Regardless of the reasons why the best employees quit, losing a great employee is a terrible thing. There’s the expense of finding, on-boarding, and training a replacement. There’s the uncertainty of how a new employee will work out. There’s the hardship on the rest of your staff until the position can be filled. We have uncovered the top 12 reasons why the best employees quit, even if they like their job.

Ever had an incredible employee, and thought, “This is the one!” They were smart, engaged, driven, and seemed to really love the job. You thought, “We’re going to be together forever!” You could really see yourself promoting this person, mentoring them, watching them climb the ranks in your company …

And then one day, they quit.

They might give you the, “It’s not you, it’s me …” speech, but what does it actually mean?

Sometimes there’s a solid reason–the person was a bad fit for the team, or moved away for personal reasons, or was offered an opportunity too great to pass up. In those cases, even if it’s a difficult transition, it feels fundamentally right.

But what about the rest? What are the reasons the best employees quit?

It’s pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something to complain about — few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door.

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, employees are only staying in a job on average for 1.5 years, so retention is getting harder all over. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Keeping your best employees starts with understanding why people leave. Here are twelve of the top reasons the best employees quit.

1. Stagnation

People don’t want to think they’re locked into a groove and will come to the same place and do the same thing every day for the next 20 or 40 years. People want to feel that they’re still moving forward and growing in their professional life. They want to have something to aspire to. If there’s no career ladder or structure for advancement, they know they’ll need to seek it somewhere else. In the meantime, they’re far more likely to be bored, unhappy, and resentful–things that affect performance and the entire team’s morale.

Have you outlined a clear path for advancement for your best employees?

Or are they looking at a dead-end job? They might be the best cashier / phone operator / junior undersecretary you’ve ever had, but that doesn’t mean they want to stay in that position forever.

It pays to get to know your employee’s goals and help them see how they can achieve them within your company.

2. No Equality

No one wants to stick around in a workplace that doesn’t treat them fairly. Do a quick gut-check: Are you paying women less than men? How many women sit on your Executive Committee? How about minorities? Millennials?

Younger workers in particular, are not willing to stick around at a company that is racist, sexist, ageist, or otherwise discriminatory in any way. Loosing a large amount of employees under 35 and looking for reasons why the best employees quit? Look at the equality in your management circle and do everything you can to make things more equal.

3. Overwork

Some periods of stress and feeling overwhelmed come with most jobs, but nothing burns out great employees faster than overwork. And often it’s the best employees–the most capable and committed, your most trusted–you overload the most. If they find themselves constantly taking on more and more, especially in the absence of recognition such as promotions and raises, they come to feel they’re being taken advantage of. And who could blame them? You’d feel the same.

4. Vague or Ever-Changing Visions

There’s nothing more frustrating than a workplace filled with visions and big dreams, but no translation of those aspirations into the strategic goals that make them achievable. Without that connection, it’s all just talk.  In a recent survey uncovering the reasons why the best employees quit, vague or ever-changing visions were almost always in the top 5.

What talented person wants to spend his or her time and energy in support of something undefined? People like to know that they’re working to create something, not just spinning their wheels.

You or the CEO may have a vision for where the company is going — but do all your employees? Some of the most successful companies are able to attract and retain great employees because they are great at communicating their vision all the way from the top down to the front-line workers. (And don’t confuse vision with financials; it needs to be bigger than that, especially if the employee in question doesn’t have stock options!)

5. Lack of Respect

There’s an old saying that employees don’t leave a company, they leave a manager. No matter how much you like, respect, or appreciate an employee, if they don’t know it, they may leave. Make sure your interactions with employees are always respectful, and that you look for ways to actively value their contribution.

6. Profits over people

When an organization values its bottom line more than its people, the best people go elsewhere, leaving behind those who are too mediocre or apathetic to find a better position. The result is a culture of underperformance, low morale, and even disciplinary issues. Of course, things like profit, output, pleasing stakeholders, and productivity are important–but success ultimately depends on the people who do the work.

7. Lack of recognition

Even the most selfless people want to be recognized and rewarded for a job well done. It is part of who we are as human beings. When you fail to recognize employees, you’re not only failing to motivate them but also missing out on the most effective way to reinforce great performance. Even if you don’t have the budget for raises or bonuses, there are lots of low-cost ways to provide recognition–and a word of appreciation is free. People won’t care if they don’t feel noticed.

8. Lack of trust

Your employees have a vantage point for viewing your behavior and weigh it against your commitments. If they see you dealing unethically with vendors, lying to stakeholders, cheating clients, or failing to keep your word, the best and most principled of them will leave. The rest, even worse, will stay behind and follow your lead. Looking for the reasons why the best employees quit? Ask yourself if they trust their manager and the companies business practices.

9. Excessive hierarchy

Every workplace needs structure and leadership, but a rigidly top-down organization makes for unhappy employees. If your best performers know they’re expected to produce without contributing their ideas, if they’re not empowered to make decisions, if they’re constantly having to defer to others on the basis of their title rather than their expertise, they don’t have much to be happy about.

Trying to uncover the reasons the best employees quit at your company? Ask yourself if employees are empowered to make their own decisions. Do you assign 6 people to complete the same task or do you trust your employees enough to have one person handle something.

10. No Morale

Even if a particular employee is positive and energetic, it is draining to be surrounded by people with low morale. Team identity and unity may be key to engaging and retaining those great employees you want.

When everyone else is unhappy and not putting in a good effort, no one wants to work there. When uncovering the top reasons the best employees quit, we found a significantly higher turnover in companies with uber emotional managers and office staff that seem to hate the company. The problem: the office staff stay (and complains everyday) while the top employees leave for a more positive work environment. If you notice a negative person or low morale on a particular team, fix it right away!

11. No Challenge or Autonomy

If you aren’t providing the opportunity for challenging, engaging work, you’re naturally going to lose those employees who want to be challenged or have a certain measure of autonomy over their work and lives. Few people are happy being micromanaged or simply toeing the company line when they have ideas for innovation.

No one wants to feel infantilized or that they aren’t trusted to make the most basic decisions in their work. People want the opportunity to be the expert in their own job.

Are you providing opportunities for professional development? Do you discuss ways to be more effective leaders as a group? Try providing your employees with consistent information to help them reach their personal professional goals.

12. Too Rigid Work Environment

Times have changed. Long gone are the days where people are satisfied clocking in at 8:00pm and leaving at 5:00pm. With the additions of smartphones to the workforce, employees are connected to their jobs 24/7/365. In turn, they don’t want to be connect to their desk for 8 straight hours without the flexibility to take a half-day here and there or work from home a couple times each month.

Studies show that a flexible work environment actually produces better results and gives employees the increasingly sought after “work-life balance.”

It’s essential to promote flexibility at your company in order to remain competitive as an employer. In a recent global study with Randstad, we found that the top benefit that Gen Z workers and Millennials want is flexibility.

Employees are expected to be reachable outside of the office by phone or email and the 9-to-5 workday no longer exists.

Aside from telecommuting and flexible schedules, more companies should allow employees to do work outside of their job description. An example of this is Google’s 20% program, which prevents employees from having to do the same projects everyday and allows them to be more creative.

Looking for reasons why the best employees quit at your company? Explore alternative work schedules to accommodate families and work-life balance. You may be surprised at productivity increases.

Conclusion

Ultimately, many people who leave their job do so because of the boss, not the work or the organization. When exploring why the best employees quit, ask yourself what you may be doing to drive your best people away, and start making the changes needed to keep them.

Practice actively listening and engaging with all your employees on a regular basis. One idea is to implement stay interviews (instead of exit interviews) to ask your current employees why they stay with the company. It helps to build a strong level of trust and engagement with employees when they are allowed to bring both their goals and their concerns to a manager — before it’s too late to identify and solve the problems.

“When sharing their tips for success, it’s clear: Nothing happens by osmosis where ultra-successful people are concerned. They plan their lives and they constantly work their plan.”

“The world’s most highly successful people and smart thinkers take time to plan out their days to the hour, even minutes…not to mention outlining their weeks, months, and long-term goals.”

“It’s truly fascinating how successful people approach problems. Where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome. Their confidence in the face of hardship is driven by the ability to let go of the negativity that holds so many otherwise sensible people back.”

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

“Self-investment is the most important practical step anyone can take when pursuing success.”

“If you’re unhappy with where you are in your life, just take a look around. More often than not, the people you’ve surrounded yourself with are the root of your problems. You’ll never reach your peak until you surround yourself with the right people.“

“Having a usable network of connections is a key indicator of success in both your business and personal life.”

“People who build great connections can roll up their sleeves and make a difference in another person’s life; not because they want to build a better relationship, although that is certainly the result, but simply because they care.”

“Your energy, focus and mental capacity are at their highest during the morning hours and proceed to wane throughout the rest of the day.”

“Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.”

“Action is uncomfortable and at times daunting, but goals are achieved through persistence, hard-work and action.”