Corporate breakups are hard, and they can be emotionally draining. It’s almost like a romantic relationship where you have to return the keys to your now-ex’s apartment. (I’m not sure why you’d have them in the first place, but then, it’s too early to derail.) You have to give back the items that have become a part of your Monday to Friday (or Sunday) routine, stash the branded shirts in the “Do not wear ever again” section of your wardrobe, and ask yourself, “What am I possibly going to face in a new organisation?” You also have to deal with the fact that, in most organisations, once you provide an exit notice, you become a potential criminal. In all honesty, I fully understand this based on the risks involved with things such as corporate intellectual property, etc.
I recently began to tease the titles of my next pieces to get a feel for the perception of those who care enough to share their opinion with me and test for relevance. When I teased the title for this piece, it led to a number of interesting conversations that I didn’t think I’d have, and there was some confluence. A friend mentioned how she avoided the exit interview by pulling an immediate resignation on the firm after she’d been treated terribly. She also mentioned the simple and generally known fact that Big Daddy Corporate already knows the problem, they’ve done nothing about it, and the little ritual will do nothing about it.
I once saw a copy of a resignation letter, and the dude went all out explaining all the frustrations that were counterproductive, including pointless processes, perceived favouritism and next to zero career progression, and he even listed out steps to remediate these issues. I laughed and said to myself, “Poor guy, if he only knew how pointless this exercise is.” The most interesting lot are the ones that send one-liners and provide the least amount of information as possible. It’s like ending a relationship via text message (I dunno, but I’ve heard it hurts more). This group is like people at a silent disco; they’re all at their party, and it’s impossible to tell who’s dancing for joy and who’s dancing out of rage.
In an organisation, I once worked in, “toxic culture” was on the list of exit reasons. I went, “YAYYY!!! “They know themselves after all.” I was honestly impressed. Two days later, I got a phone call from my HR business partner, saying he’d like to know what problems I had faced. Luckily for him, I was feeling kind of generous. I explained that I understood he was acting in this manner because it was part of his job description and that the outcome of the conversation would make no difference. I mean, in defence of organisations, why should they make changes based on feedback from one tiny employee? It makes no sense. I also explained that these issues are known to all “stakeholders” (rolls eyes) and could be presented to executives, but since we cannot or do not (more like “do not”) make connections in Naira and Kobo terms, nobody really cares. In all honesty, if we are still making profit and they keep increasing, why should we care about anything else? Why should we care if addressing “softer things” could further increase our bottom line? Queries, yelling, and mandates seem to work just fine, don’t they? Even when they try to “mandate” that these issues be solved, just like the Nigerian economy, the reality is that there is no silver bullet to solve these issues.
When I left a different organisation in the past, I went to tell the people whom I respected a lot and from whom I had learned a couple of very handy tips directly and indirectly, in person, about my exit. One of them seemed disappointed and pointed out that he keeps asking, “Are we saying we do not have what it takes to keep our best hands?” In all fairness, this was at the pinnacle of the great resignation, and the factors driving this were both internal and external. But still, he alluded to the agents that were under the control of the organisation but were almost entirely ignored. I had to fill out an “exit form” as part of my off-boarding process. At this point, I was pretty angry, as I was mentally stuffed with resignation and exit literature at that time, which led to my writing a piece on the great resignation. This was exacerbated by the fact that the HR fellow who picked up my ID card confided in me, saying, “Management doesn’t use the data for anything; they simply want to know where our staff are headed.” “At least they use it for something,” I thought.
I was quite surprised when a friend of mine was resigning from her job, and wrote a love letter to the HR department, explaining all the BS that she was being served by her team. Somehow, the memo found its way to an influential mid-level manager and a member of the C-suite, and the naughty kids got some spanking. This happened because the mid-level manager, whom I know and greatly respect, is the personification of Mr Nice Guy, and We don’t take bullsh*t around here in one person. So I’d say we need more “leaders” who fall into this category: sweet but able to get their hands dirty for the right cause.
Maybe our work culture (in this part of the world, at least) prevents us from being able to do the right thing and actually take action about our work culture (hmm, too many cultures here). In some organisations, the completion of “exit surveys” is a mandatory part of the off-boarding process. For Pete’s sake, we are breaking up; why do you think I’d want to talk to you? Why do you force me to do so? So you can make presentations with horribly designed charts to big daddy corporate, saying we had 55 exits last month and 23 of the employees felt we were full of sh*t, but failed to tell us how to become less stinky? Hmm, that beats me.
I can’t focus on specific issues because of the breadth of reasons for resignations, ranging from the employee who got or felt passed over for a promotion to the dude who feels we should have throw pillows and water guns at work to de-stress. But like almost every set, there are trends and patterns to these things. All it takes is to simply pick out the intersection as a starting point and thrash them out. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not that simple. In large corporations, it’s never that simple. There is no silver bullet to kill the werewolf of attrition. But as an organisation, if you want to give a damn, give a good damn. If you don’t want to give a damn, then hoard those damns!
There’s also the fact that some employees are leaving because they feel they were sold lies to join the organisation. I know an organisation where there are primarily two classifications of staff, with one class treated like sons of the King and another handled like the runt of the litter. Given the reputation (public, obviously) of this organisation, Dalits (this refers to the lowest class of people in the Indian caste system, known as untouchables) felt like they were swindled with their eyes wide open. I’d liken the feelings of new joiners in this firm, to the feeling when the barber gives you a really nice haircut and douses your face with his powder that makes you look nicer than you really are (in real life, as it is commonly said). However, after you take a shower, you see that you are mere flesh and blood after all. Every one of the Corporate Dalits wanted to leave the organisation. Imagine telling them to fill out an exit survey or sit for an interview. May the Force be with you, like they say in Star Wars.
You change organizations a couple of times, and you can only roll your eyes when you hear garbage like “We put our people first,” “We care,” and all that nonsense. Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut the hell up. Let’s not talk about the corporate stigma and guilt trips that come with resignations. I mean, the only reason resigners face negative energy is simply that they are the ones laying off the organisation. An organisation lays off employees for cost optimisation reasons and no one bats an eye; an employee decides to leave an organisation and everyone loses their minds. It’s bad enough that we have to deal with the emotional toll of telling the family that you are no longer part of this thing of ours. Or the stress of telling a sweet boss [in your head] that although they are nice and supportive, you’ve had enough of the larger organisational headaches, and someone else offered some more cash, so you figured if you’re going to deal with corporate headaches, you might as well make some extra cash from it.
I was once in a special workshop, and we were working on an employee experience improvement pet project. We decided to spice things up by reaching out to ex-employees to learn why they left and how we can improve the overall employee experience. To our surprise, one of the respondents was outright bitter and full of rage, saying, “I filled out their form; they can read it for my feedback.”
“Oops,” I thought. “What did they ever do to make her that mad?”
In case you are wondering, what’s the point of this mindless ramble? You’ve done the same thing for ages, and business has gone fine. Who am I to tell you otherwise? After all, you have enough recruiters to bring in more people, and you have enough cash to pay more for a replacement role. Well, it’s not you I care about; it’s the remainers i.e., those who choose to stay behind when everyone else is resigning and have to question themselves if they are making the right choices or even deal with now-ex-colleagues who constantly yell at them, saying, “You need to get the hell out of there.” I can go ahead and talk about how a well-managed off-boarding process can turn ex-employees into loyal alumni, ambassadors for the organisation or even mentors to new and current employees. But this isn’t the point of the piece. Addressing the issues your about-to-be-ex-employees raise (if they choose to be generous) might help the remainers choose an option that favours the organisation between the questions of “to jump ship or not to jump ship?” It might even grant salvation to the quiet quitters and change the hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, which, after all, will put more change in the pockets of Big Daddy Corporate and keep him happy. Now that’s something you should really care about.
