The “Two Weeks’ Notice” Approach to Changing Jobs Is Bad for Companies and Employees

The practice of giving two weeks’ notice when leaving a job is outdated and inefficient, and can be a contentious and expensive problem for companies.

There’s a much-touted refrain that employees leave managers, not companies. While that sentiment certainly holds truth, today’s reality is that job-hopping, even career-hopping, has become the norm for a younger generation of workers — even for those with good managers.

Recent research from staffing agency Robert Half found that some 64% of workers believe job-hopping to be an acceptable, even beneficial, practice — especially millennial workers. Millennials resign nearly two times as often as non-millennials with comparable tenure (34.5% compared to 19.4%), according to new data from people analytics company Visier. And when they do, most will give the customary two weeks’ notice, an arbitrary and mostly American phenomenon that increasingly seems antiquated.

This job-hopping mindset, combined with the inefficient standard of giving two weeks’ notice, can be an incredibly contentious and expensive problem for companies. How an employee leaves a company can also develop into an ongoing obstacle in an employee’s career, thanks to the increased use of backchannel reference checks.

While the job-hopping trend may be a difficult cycle to stop, there is a more useful, relevant, and less frustrating approach employers can implement that can not only decrease turnover, but also lead to mutually beneficial solutions for both parties. Leaders need to make discussions about career transitions and job opportunities less taboo in the first place.

For example, when Justin Copie, CEO and owner of Innovative Solutions, took over the company, he mandated that all employees interview elsewhere to see if the grass was greener. He only wanted people who really wanted to be there to stay, so he offered them an out. Once someone determined they actually wanted to stay, they were asked to help create their own job description to make sure that every aspect of their job personally resonated with them.

In a similar vein, CEO Josh Sample of Drive Social Media encourages his employees to discuss issues with him openly and to let him know if they want to do something else. For employees who are upfront and honest, he’s willing to help them find a new job and provides a recommendation letter while they wrap up their work at Drive.

Several years ago, our company, Acceleration Partners (AP), created our own version of an open transition program that we now call our Career Engagement Program. What we and many other company leaders have found is that having an open transition program actually improves engagement, retention, and the culture overall.