Nowadays, companies often move from one condition to another. Restructuring and optimization have become a norm for every company, regardless of size and the industry. Even those who admit they made sustainable changes years ago do not need to move to make small moves and changes in their structures. The dynamics of the companies’ movement often provoke changes in their staff. People may be forced/asked to leave or be made redundant due to a change in a shorter time. No matter the reason, most of the employees being part of it do not feel comfortable. Even if the change is initiated by themselves, rarely a person feels good about that change. In most cases, negative feelings of not being needed arise and make the departing person act differently than the standard and ethically accepted way.
And this is where many leaders fail. They decide this behavior is normal and will end with the departing person’s exit. But the damage this leaving employee can cause far outweighs the regular stage of inconvenience and pressure. Focused on showing that the company and the team are helpless without them, departing employees change their behavior and become aggressive, intolerant, and blaming. The apathy they demonstrate often involves actions that try to illustrate how bad the environment is, the employees are undervalued, and the company is not caring about them.
But the worst those not come while employees are in their departing phase. The consequences of such unmanaged behavior may cause much deeper problems in the team after the departure happens.
While aggression may have different faces, these employees often use an approach that allows them to hurt the company and hide the damage until it is too late. Leaders, on the other hand, believing that the employee thinks well, do not focus their attention on the departing person after they have cleared the reason why this employee is leaving. Instead, they start moving others’ roles and responsibilities to cover the loss of skills and close the gap created by the departing person in the productivity and efficiency of the team.
The leader often becomes a quiet supporter of the damage the employee creates after them by missing the behavior and last days of the departing employee in the company. This damage may look like other employees quitting willingly, processes not working, information missing, etc.
To react appropriately to departing person damage plans, the leader should focus their attention on them and look for the signs of discrepancy against established cultural and company norms. Here is what leaders often need to acknowledge when they have a departing employee.
Hidden aggression
Often the leader can identify open aggression because it has a visible face, like telling coworkers something, threatening others, etc. But the hidden aggression is often missed because it has many faces but does not appear on the surface. Covert aggression can be found in not sharing information, working in siloz, moving tasks from themselves to others unfamiliar with the steps and the processes, and delaying information or results from work.
Negative talk
In many cases, people who leave us start building a story of how bad it is to work for the company. And if this is done directly, the leader often can react most adequately. But there is also hidden negative talk. It happens in small groups where the person communicates only with a part of the team. Often this part of the team is the employees who have doubts and are easily convinced by words that certain situations have only one outcome. It is a common technique for self-defense. Mostly this technique touches a person’s EGO, but it may also impact people who are not convinced that their work suits them.
Disturbing presence
Remember the last time when a person decided not to follow the rules and procedures set? They came when they wanted to work; little was their work a priority for them, and others were unsatisfied with that behavior. It is the same with the departing person from the team. Often they deposit their resignation letter and start behaving like nothing is more vital than themselves. While this may be normal behavior for the person, who believes this is a way to return all the pressure to the employer, such behavior often harms others’ well-being at work. It is in the hands of the leader to see it and react to it when the person departing from the team starts to demonstrate it.
Last day sorry behavior
This common technique is part of the departing person’s arsenal of weapons. They used it as a last try to be seen as someone not so wrong in the eyes of former colleagues. No matter what is demonstrated as a behavior, the departing individual is never sorry. The leader who misses this part of the path with the departing employee often falls into the trap of being forced to explain why the departing person is leaving the company. It is a technique to support individuals’ version of what happened before the final decision and turn the guilt and responsibility on the employer. Apologizing to all coworkers is not sincere; it is often used to turn others into the path the individual has built or chosen for themselves.
Upgraded ways for development story
A departing person uses a softening approach for their role in the whole situation, using the story of development as an excuse for things never happened. The new position gives me more development opportunities is an often-used phrase. Still, the leader should know that talk and react accordingly to the situation and the person. Suppose the person leaves for a much more significant role in another company. In that case, this talk may be OK. Still, suppose the person moves to another company within the same or similar industry and has similar responsibilities. In that case, the story for development and growth is a way to mask the actual situation with that person in the company. The role of the leader is to collect information about what the person is saying and be close to the team to defend the team structure and company decisions and give a clear perspective to other team members to allow them not to be misled by the departing person talk.
The money talk
Especially in the lower grids of the structures, people often see money as the only reasonable component defining success. And these people are often motivated internally to search for more from this resource. While the money on the lower grids of the structures in the company is often not enough to cover basic needs, they are a convenient weapon against the leader and the employer. Despite the needs they cover, money is a powerful weapon because their amount creates feelings about justice. And while being on the ground of the needs of the individual, the money talk never stops. Used as a weapon, money can be a topic that separates those who are productive from others – being more relaxed and not making so much effort at work. At the same time, the second group, while receiving less income, often creates discrepancies in the workplace, wrongfully accusing employers of not being fair to them. With the power of the money talk, this second group becomes powerful and can quickly turn a working organization into a chaotic and stressful place if not managed correctly.
IN CONCLUSION:
Departing people are typical for every organization. This separation may turn positive or negative depending on their attitude and power in the organization. When a departing person goes, the balance is often broken. As part of this process, people consciously and unconsciously create discrepancies and conflicts in their last days with the company. Teams struggle with departures of people, no matter the level of the individual. It is only in the hands of the leader to manage this departure in a way that saves emotions and builds on positivity and a balanced environment without harming remaining people’s internal motivation and engagement toward work, team, and the company.
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