5 ways to lose employees and demotivate people

When How to Lose Friends & Alienate People was released – a tongue-in-cheek take on Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People – I chuckled. It reinforced a simple truth: Despite extraordinary amounts of available wisdom on myriad topics, many still choose practices that are counterproductive.

Having spent two decades working with leaders and teams in organisations ranging from schools to large corporations, one issue stands out above all others: employee engagement.

Organisations benefit massively when employees are engaged and motivated. Job satisfaction increases, emotional and mental health improve – and as a result, levels of productivity and innovation rise. What leader wouldn’t want these outcomes?

Yet, despite the clear benefits of an engaged workplace including greater ownership, energy and commitment, lower absenteeism, burnout and staff turnover, I have seen countless ways leaders inadvertently drive good people away.

Employee engagement is a genuine win-win for both employees and organisations. So why do engagement levels remain so persistently low?

Inspired by the classic spoof of Carnegie’s work (and hopeful that a little reverse psychology may help), here are my 5 top tips for losing employees and demotivating people:

1. Keep your employees in the dark

Communication helps employees feel valued. This is exactly what you don’t want. Instead, withhold information critical to their ability to do their jobs. Since most humans’ struggle with uncertainty and change, keep major decisions under wraps – or better yet, allow gossip to shape the narrative.

When Satya Nadella became CEO and turned around the culture of Microsoft, he focused heavily on communication, clarifying the mission, promoting empathy and transparency and repeatedly reinforcing the organisation’s purpose. The result was improved engagement, greater collaboration and increased innovation.

Don’t be like Satya. Keep employees guessing and watch them head for the door.

2. Place ill-equipped leaders at the head of your teams

Gallup found that leadership accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement. To lose employees, ensure your leaders are inconsistent, demonstrate favouritism, create a sense of unfairness, communicate poorly, avoid conflict and foster low psychological safety.

Uber, despite being a high-performing organisation, has always been plagued by reports of fear-driven leadership, internal aggression, toxic competition and burnout caused by unrealistic expectations.

Be more like Uber and get those ill-equipped leaders in place.

3. Ensure high levels of bureaucracy and red tape

A study from the Asana Work Innovation Lab found that knowledge workers spend huge amounts of time on status updates, chasing approvals, searching for information, duplicating work and administrative co-ordination. These factors are directly linked to stress, disengagement, exhaustion and reduced innovation.

Nokia, which dominated the mobile phone industry in the 2000s and lost this dominance in a matter of years, frustrated talented employees and slowed innovation by creating multiple approval layers and risk-averse decision-making. Deloitte and McKinsey research points to layered organisations frustrating employees.

So, make everything as complex as possible and watch them leave.

4. Launch complex performance management processes

This one’s a real winner. Gallup has repeatedly shown that only a small percentage of employees strongly agree that performance reviews inspire them to improve. Most describe them as stressful, unclear and demotivating.

Performance management improves engagement when it feels developmental, fair, clear and human. To lose employees, ensure your performance management process is punitive, inconsistent, subjective, political and disconnected from growth and development.

Adobe unfortunately moved in the wrong direction when it replaced annual performance reviews with regular check-ins, real-time feedback and ongoing coaching conversations. Employee turnover dropped, manager-employee relationships improved and engagement increased.

Don’t be like Adobe. Rather watch motivation levels plummet at every review.

5. Implement performance punishment and keep pay the same

This strategy focuses on losing your best talent, which should be your ultimate goal. Start by ensuring your strongest performers become the organisation’s go-to people. Ideally, they should be carrying the non-performers whom your ill-equipped leaders refuse to hold accountable. As they absorb increasing pressure, make sure they receive no additional recognition or reward.

High performers generally leave before low performers because they have options and stronger expectations around growth, fairness and leadership capability. This makes it a reliable way to escort them to the exit.

Atlassian, in a misguided attempt to improve engagement and reduce overload, introduced team health checks to monitor workload sustainability, collaboration, ownership and morale.

Instead, continue whipping the strongest donkey and watch turnover rise.

Of course I jest, but in truth this is no laughing matter. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace reports that declining employee engagement is costing the world economy $10 trillion (R165 trillion) per annum in lost productivity, not to mention the impact on people’s health and wellness.

It is urgent that leaders work intentionally to take care of people. When this happens, everyone wins.

Travis Gale

Founder & Managing Director

Appletree Group

Image credit: Magnific/DC Studio