Mistreating People When They Give Notice
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Mistreating people when they give notice is a really bad move.
It’s a common story that I hear all the time. Especially these days when so many people are moving jobs:
An employee puts in their two week’s notice (which is happening a lot these days) and companies or leaders suddenly start acting petty and mistreating that employee.
Cutting to the chase: someone leaving your organization is not a personal betrayal. Employees do not owe the company or their bosses to work there forever.
If someone has dedicated time, effort, and energy to the company (often years of great service) and decides to move on, do not treat them like garbage. Treat them well on their way out the door.
Celebrate the time they have put in and what they’ve contributed to the company, even if the fact that they’re moving on is disappointing to you. Do not completely negate any positive experience they have had at your organization or their good feelings towards you.
What do you think will happen by treating someone who puts in their notice like crap; they’ll change their mind and stay? Absolutely not. The only effect it will have is to damage your reputation and make you look bad; both to them and your other employees.
Make employees inside your organization feel valued and appreciated for what they contribute, even up to their last day.
Here’s why.
It’s always the right thing to do; to care about people and treat them with kindness and compassion. This is important and should be sufficient and the only reason you need. Doing this is an example of high integrity and high emotional intelligence. Like it or not, you can’t change to situation (certainly not by mistreating someone) and ‘punishing’ someone because you’re upset is not only childish behavior, it dishonors all that they’ve given to the company up until this point.
Treating folks who are leaving with kindness and dignity creates the dynamic of them leaving on a good note. This makes them far more likely to make a concerted effort to set the next person that comes into that position up for success. This is a point where employees can be very helpful, or very unhelpful and the consequences can be drastic either way. Do everything you can to promote good will and an earnest, amicable goodbye.
Your other employees are watching. Being passive-aggressive, rude, badmouthing, or having a sour attitude towards an employee who’s on the way out displays to your remaining employees that you don’t care about them as humans. It’s disingenuous.
What they see unfolding in real time is that the company or the manager who likely claims to care about employees will turn on them the second that they are no longer getting what they want out of them. AKA they don’t actually care about them beyond their usefulness as an employee. Feeling used and unappreciated is a powerful demotivator.
Honor people.
Everyone’s time is valuable and limited. Every minute an employee spends working is an investment in the organization. Honor that investment and time and make them feel appreciated on the way out the door.
When an employee puts in a two week’s notice, celebrate their contributions and treat them well. At that point they’ve already made the decision to leave, and regardless of how you feel about it there’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s unproductive and a bad look to be petty and divisive. They’ve put time and energy into making your company successful. Have the integrity and wherewithal to leave on a high note and give them a positive send off.
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