Chapter One: Do You Have A Minute?
Rethinking Two Weeks’ Notice is also available as a eBook from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever you get your eBooks.
It’s near the end of the workday when you hear a knock on the open door of your office. One of your employees pokes his head through your doorway. “Hey, you have a minute?”
“Sure,” you reply, barely looking up from your computer. “What’s up?” He steps into the office. “Do you mind if I close the door?”
Oh no, you think. A pit forms in your stomach. “Go ahead,” you say reluctantly.
With a nod, the employee closes the door behind him and steps into the room. He nervously takes a seat and utters those dreaded but familiar words: “I’m giving my two weeks’ notice.”
Although he keeps talking, you’ve stopped processing his words. The first question that enters your mind is “Why?” and then you’re quickly racing ahead, thinking about what you are doing to do and how to fill his role. There’s no chance of hiring a replacement before he leaves, so who will cover his responsibilities until you can find someone to take over on a permanent basis? How will those people react to having more work?
How many times have you or a colleague had this painful conversation? How many times have you thought to yourself, I had no idea they were unhappy. Why didn’t they tell me sooner? I could have fixed things.
But the opportunity to fix things never presented itself, and now it’s too late. Your employee has made up his mind, and all you can do is pick up the pieces. You urgently need to figure out how to reassign his work with as little disruption to clients, customers, or operations as possible. You also need to manage internal communications about the departure, prevent a cascade of additional departures, and clear your schedule to interview for a long-term replacement.
This is a poor outcome. It’s bad for you as an employer, it’s bad for your clients, partners, and customers, and—though this may be less obvious at first—it can be bad for the departing employee too, no matter their reasons for leaving. A great employee who announces that she is leaving without prior discussion will inevitably break trust with her manager. In one sentence, she may taint years of great work and goodwill; she will be remembered not for her excellent service but for the rushed, stressful transition her departure precipitated. Worse, it can have a negative impact on other members of your team. News of sudden departures may ripple through your entire organization, causing other people to think, Why did they leave so suddenly? Do they know something I don’t?
In this situation, everyone but the employee who has just handed in their notice is blindsided. The employee has likely been thinking of leaving for a while. They probably decided to start exploring job openings a few months ago before working up the courage to submit an application, going through a round of interviews, and negotiating an offer. All the while, they never mentioned their dissatisfaction or addressed the underlying issues that led to their decision to leave. In all likelihood, they also checked out mentally weeks or months ago, creating even more issues that will reveal themselves over time.
But lest we paint the employee as the problem here, it’s important to remember that the inverse of this dynamic occurs just as often.
Have you ever found yourself terminating an employee and asking them to depart that same day with nothing to show for their service but two weeks’ severance pay? Think of how it felt when you called them into your office to “chat for a minute.” Were your palms sweaty? Did your heart race? Can you remember the startled look on their face? You probably didn’t sleep the night before or after.
You may have also experienced this awful conversation as the person being terminated. Did you feel angry and resentful? Did you think, Why didn’t anyone tell me there was a problem sooner? They never gave me a chance to do something about the issue.
The paradigm doesn’t work for companies or employees. It creates distrust and, worse, allows underlying problems within the organization to continue, which may result in additional departures or dissatisfaction. So why do we allow it to persist? In most cases, it’s because until now, we’ve lacked the imagination to find a better way.
Why Things End Badly
First, consider why employees leave by giving two weeks’ notice in the first place.
Most employees don’t realize how much of a strain it places on their company when they hand in their notice and depart abruptly. And even if they do, they may believe that they’ve invested plenty of time and effort into the company over the years and have no obligation to make their departure easier—especially if they’re feeling frustrated at work.
While an employee in this position might think they are untouched by the fallout of their departure, the reality is much more complicated. Many astute hiring managers actively seek out back-channel references by reaching out to former colleagues and managers of a candidate—not just the ones a candidate provides. An employee who leaves a company on poor terms may create an invisible roadblock in their career progression.
But in many cases, employees don’t give advanced notice because they don’t want to inform their employer that they’re leaving until they have secured a new role. I’d wager that for many departing employees, their biggest fear is that their manager will fire them on the spot once they know the employee wants to seek other employment, perhaps sending them off with a pithy condemnation, such as If you don’t want to be here, you might as well leave now! Even if you haven’t heard this chilling phrase personally, you’ve probably worked somewhere where you could easily imagine hearing it from several managers or leaders at the company.
If your company doesn’t enable employees to address their concerns or frustrations in a safe way or regularly walks people to the door the moment they share that they will be moving on, you can’t reasonably expect them to give you a heads-up when they’re thinking of leaving. Why should they risk losing their job before they’ve figured out what’s next for them? It feels far safer to be secretive about their plans and schedule a series of “doctor’s appointments” that are actually interviews.
If you’re an employee, you may wonder what’s wrong with giving two weeks’ notice, especially if you have never managed a team of people. While two weeks’ notice has become an accepted default, it’s not even a requirement. In the United States, unless you are under contract, you are employed at will, and you can leave a company without any notice. Two weeks’ notice is a cultural norm rather than a legal one. For decades, it has generally been considered a courteous way to leave a job.
But if you’re reading this as a manager, you might be thinking, It sure doesn’t feel courteous or respectful, especially coming from someone whom you may have mentored for years. Instead, it might come across as a slap in the face and cause a strain on you personally, the team, and the business.
Unfortunately, it’s accepted practice. Absent an alternative, the vast majority of employees believe that giving two weeks’ notice is the right thing to do. It’s such an ingrained, long-standing norm that it was the title of a 2002 Sandra Bullock movie that grossed $200 million at the box office.
Outside the United States, at-will employment generally doesn’t exist. In other regions, such as Europe, employment contracts normally require longer notice periods, often up to three months or more, depending on the seniority or tenure of the employee. These notice periods are mutual and contractual; both sides must adhere to them. The way employees or employers manage these contractual periods may vary. In the United Kingdom, for example, some employers send departing employees on “gardening leave,” while others offer to buy out a notice period. In all these scenarios, however, a significant period of notice is both socially and legally mandated.
European approaches may provide both employers and employees with a longer lead time, but they don’t address the underlying problems that cause employees to leave. There is no guarantee that those who leave after a longer notice period will depart more amicably than those who give only two weeks’ notice or that employers will do more to understand the root causes of their departure.
On the other side of the employee-employer dynamic, a company that regularly terminates employees without warning will also experience negative effects. Companies that regularly fire employees abruptly—letting people go when they express dissatisfaction or describe problems—will surely witness a collapse in trust between employees and managers. Moreover, those who depart have access to social media and are unafraid to take their frustration to Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and other platforms. The fundamental problem is the same: a failure to manage employee engagement and departures in an effective way.
No matter how you slice it, behind every employee departure in this two weeks’ notice paradigm is a professional relationship that could have ended amicably yet is marred by frustration and regret. This is all because the two parties never sat down for an honest conversation until it was too late.
Who bears responsibility for this sad state of affairs? While it’s true that when they’re considering leaving, employees may neglect to initiate honest conversations, in the vast majority of cases, the blame can’t be laid at their feet.
Instead, the culprit is often the company. The number one reason employees fail to speak openly about their decision to leave is because their employer has failed to create a psychologically safe environment in which to do so. Trust is a two-way street. If a company culture doesn’t encourage and facilitate open discussions, managers and executives can’t complain when people walk out on them with minimal notice.
Employees intuitively understand whether they can trust their managers. They also talk. If one person shares their perspective openly and their vulnerability is exploited, word will quickly spread that it’s best to keep these feelings about the company or manager private.
Rightly or wrongly, many people believe that if they approach their manager and say, “I don’t know whether this job is working out,” they will be told to pack their bags. For many, especially those with families to feed, that’s a terrifying possibility. Employees who don’t feel they can be honest may keep their true feelings to themselves, even to the point of lying outright, right up to the day they quit. It’s understandable. Behavior follows incentives, and in this case, the employee has an obvious incentive to keep quiet and hold on to their job until they have a new one.
Companies aren’t automatically entitled to openness from their employees; leaders must create a safe environment to encourage that openness. An open transition program can only exist when leaders build a foundation of trust and feedback that enables the difficult conversations that can provide extensive notice of an employee exit.
What Is an Open Transition Program?
Put simply, an open transition program (OTP) is a system for a company to create a safe and trustworthy environment for the management of inevitable personnel changes. The aim of an OTP is to identify and solve problems that cause employees to leave and, if necessary,
provide a way for employees to exit companies in a respectful, mutually beneficial manner. As much as possible, this should be done on their own terms.
There are four core aspects to making our OTP work:
Psychological safety, or trust at scale
Open and honest communication
Mutual respect
Commitment to mutually beneficial outcomes
A good OTP comprises all four of these elements, not simply the external transition itself. If you’ve ever seen an amicable breakup, divorce, or employee exit, you’ve probably seen these four elements put into practice:
Both people had healthy trust in each other, which allowed them to assume positive intent and believe they were not trying to harm each other.
The relationship featured open communication: problems were discussed early, before they could fester, and neither person was punished for their honesty.
The relationship, even as it neared its end point, featured a respectful bond forged over time that kept things cordial and civil.
Both people wanted what was best for the other and were willing to be flexible to create a better outcome for each person.
We weren’t the first company to create a program containing at least some of these elements. However, I believe we integrated them into a scalable, replicable, comprehensive system.
To understand the principles behind an OTP, consider the case of Netflix. The streaming giant’s former chief talent officer, Patty McCord, worked hard to make parting ways with employees as open and respectful as possible. Netflix has deep pockets, so one way they did this was by providing a combination of transparent feedback and a generous severance package (a minimum of four months of full pay).1 If an employee was no longer a good fit for the company, they might be told, “We’re parting ways, but in light of your spectacular service, we’re going to give you a spectacular severance package.”2 No doubt this greatly softened the blow of needing to find a new job.
Most companies, especially small and medium-size businesses, don’t have the economic resources to shell out Netflix-size severance packages. This was certainly the case for my company when I first led the effort to reconsider our transition process. But even if a company can’t replicate McCord’s gesture of hefty severance packages, they can follow Netflix’s lead by leaning into transparency and open communications.
In my company’s case, our leadership team recognized a potential opportunity in making it as easy as possible for our employees to discuss whether they were feeling engaged or eyeing the exit. As we explored how we might put this into practice, an opportunity to test our hypothesis presented itself in the form of one of our most well-liked team members.
Case Study: Turning Theory into Practice
This is the story of the first employee who went through our OTP program. Let’s call him Jim. Everyone at the company loved Jim. Despite his popularity, however, Jim’s performance had been steadily deteriorating for some time.
Initially, we put Jim on a performance improvement plan (PIP). This approach improved things temporarily, but after a few months, the same issues surfaced. Objectively, Jim’s job performance hovered between mediocre and average. It was becoming a problem.
We could have simply fired Jim, and frankly, we considered that. We could have put Jim on another PIP, but after our experience with the first one, we had little faith that it would lead to permanent improvement. But we felt there might be a better way for everyone involved. We decided to engage Jim in a transparent conversation that started something like this:
“We’ve noticed your job performance has declined recently, and we’re concerned you’re no longer engaged. How do you feel about your performance?”
From this opening, we started a dialogue. It became clear that Jim wanted to do something different with his professional life, and his listlessness had bled into his work. We came to a mutual decision that it was time for Jim to find a job that better fit his ambitions.
Once we reached that decision, the normal course of action would have been to terminate Jim’s role and offer him a small severance. Of course, this would have left Jim without a job and income while we struggled to cover his work and alleviate the concerns of his former clients. Instead, we experimented with a different approach.
We asked Jim to continue tending to his accounts but gave him the flexibility to simultaneously look for a new job. We also made it clear that we intended to support him during his period of transition. In return, we asked Jim to regularly update us on his job search and let us know when he needed time off for interviews. We actively encouraged his efforts.
Eventually, Jim found a new job and left our company. He departed on far better terms than he would have if we’d simply fired him when it became clear he didn’t want to continue in his role. His replacement had plenty of time to transition successfully into the role, and we avoided the many downsides of an abrupt employee departure.
Following our experience with Jim, we knew we were onto something. Was our approach perfect? Far from it. We made mistakes, such as not setting a clear end date at the outset of the process. But our ability to turn what could have been a frustrating and troublesome experience into a surprisingly pleasant and positive one provided clear proof of concept for the idea that bloomed into the OTP.
Over the years, we came to know Jim as “Patient Zero,” the first test subject of our OTP, which we initially called the Mindful Transition Program before later changing the name to Career Engagement Program, which we still use internally. This OTP put us on a path to resolving a complex problem that had previously perplexed us, along with countless other company leaders.
Employment Isn’t for Life Anymore
Two common objections I often encounter when discussing the concept of an OTP are “This could never work in my business,” and “This is more trouble than it’s worth.” These concerns can be valid in some cases. But while the OTP is not a one-size-fits-all solution, it is at least a one-size-fits-most option.
Another common objection to the idea of an OTP is this: “Why would I make it easier for people to leave? Shouldn’t I be entirely focused on retaining people?”
Yes, you should always strive to retain good employees. However, acting as though people will stay with your company forever is a misreading of the professional landscape. Employers and employees today need to recognize that the rules of the employment game have changed dramatically.
Some employers cling to the belief that if they create an outstanding company culture, they can reduce unwanted turnover to zero. Not only is this belief inaccurate, it also sets up false expectations. Even at companies on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list, the average employee remains in each role for only twenty-four to thirty-two months.3 People change, interests change, companies change, and people move on. It’s a natural part of our professional evolution.
Today’s employers and employees tend to form more of a short-term alliance than a lifetime partnership. Most companies, however, haven’t really evolved many of their practices in response to this shift; they keep the same norms that were designed when departures were less frequent, even as those exits have become routine. This is where an OTP comes into play: once you accept that employees leaving is an inevitability of modern business—no matter how great your culture is—you’ll want to make them as productive as possible.
In the next chapter, I will identify which companies are well suited for the OTP and maybe surprise you by explaining why it works in more businesses than you might expect.
Up Next - Chapter Two: Opening Up To Trust
Nathan McAlone, “Here’s What You Get When Netflix Fires You,” Business Insider, June 21, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-severance-package-4-months-full-pay-2017-6
Patty McCord, “How Netflix Reinvented HR,” Harvard Business Review, January- February 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr.
Becky Peterson, “Travis Kalanick Lasted in His Role for 6.5 Years,” Business Insider, August 20, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-tech-companies-2017–8.