When an employee leaves your company, it almost always fits into one of a few clear buckets: they left on good terms, or bad terms, or you let them go yourself.
- She found a better role, and you aren’t matching the offer. Either because you don’t want to or that you can’t, you don’t meet or exceed compensation or responsibility or title or something else that the new role offers, though she would be willing to stay.
- She’s quitting, and so you can’t do anything about it. Whether or not for another role, she wants to leave your company (maybe it’s time or maybe there’s a problem).
- You’re letting her go. Because of budgetary or strategy reasons, her role is being eliminated or fundamentally changed. You could think of this as anything from convenient (downsizing on someone you don’t think was a good fit anyway) to painful (someone you really appreciated but didn’t have the role or place for).
- You’re firing her. Because of performance or actions, she is being removed from the organization. There is an array of euphemisms and agreements that mask these, often for optics.
Happily most have left Technical.ly on good terms. But I have experience with them all. Here are some things I’ve learned about the process
- More than 80 percent of employee turnover is attributed to bad hiring decisions, according to Harvard Business Review.
- HR executives try to put a financial cost on replacing staff, something like 20 percent of a mid-level manager’s salary, according to SHRM estimates. So, say, replacing a $50k manager has a cost of $10k on the low end of estimates.
- When you’re letting someone go, have a script, make it quick, stay on message and get out.
- You have to play favorites. I didn’t act decisively enough when a particular teammate whom I wanted to retain announced she had gotten another offer. It was before I better understood the crude, if effective, old ‘rank and yank’ concept: fight for your top performers, train your middle performers and cut your lowest performers. The concept is that you’re aiming to continue to strengthen your team.
- And the insight can help you predict whether you yourself are being demoted or laid off.
- Follow specific steps to get the deed done.
- Be transparent with the team. Clarify whether it’s a lay off or someone is fired for cause.
- Lay offs are tough as hell.