Lateral quitter

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Lateral quitter
ˈlætərəl ˈkwɪtə (n.)
One who voluntarily leaves your organisation to go work somewhere else.

Allowing for the bid/ask spread or latent energy hurdle, at the phase transition between good employees you value and want to keep, and poor employees you don't value and would be just as happy never to see again — a sort of purgatorial state where there’s no particular appetite to proactively whack staff, but few crocodile tears shed if they do decide to push off— as a matter of logic lateral quitters will tend to be good employees you didn’t want to leave.

If they are leaving, therefore, this is your problem. It means you have got something wrong. Most likely it will be one of three things. Money, opportunity for progress or quality of work.

Another way of looking at that continuum is this: you pay poor employees more than they are worth to tou, and good employees ,less than than they are worth.

That they

See also

• Legibility