Wednesday 26 September 2012

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

There's a reason that 99% of pop songs are about breaking up. Everyone, sooner or later, experiences a break up. All good things must come to an end and, when they do, they can bring drama and heartbreak and all kinds of lyrical inspiration. 

It's no different at work. Sooner or later the love affair ends. One or both parties is left feeling bruised, hurt, angry and wants to show the other just what a big mistake they've made (see Beyonce or John Terry for details). 

Neil Morrison wrote a post recently guiding employees through the break up process. It's here. It was funny, pithy and not a little caustic. If it were a pop song, it would be F*** You by Cee Lo Green.

As if on cue, less than 24 hours after reading Neil's post, I received a forwarded email from a friend. One of her distant colleagues had gone Michael Douglas Falling-Down style bonkers and emailed a detailed diatribe to the whole Head Office explaining exactly why he was leaving (I like to think he was channelling Adele - it was a self-indulgent, self-pitying little ditty in which he was the injured party and they were heartless b*******).

Does it have to be that way? 

I left a business recently. We'd grown apart but the break-up was amicable. I have fond memories and part of me Will Always Love Them (Dolly, not Whitney). It was, to all intents and purposes, a grown-up break up. 

But it takes two to make a grown-up break up. The onus isn't just on the employee who leaves to act professionally.

It's easy for a business (and by that I mean the people in the business) to create a pantomime villain out of a leaver. We've all seen it - they've gone, left us, done us wrong.  We knew they were no good. If they've done a critical exit interview this is picked apart, justified or analysed as if it were a Dear John letter. They're dead to us now - we're Kelis, and we hate them so much. 

What if everyone who leaves the business isn't a villain? What if, rather than a cardboard box and a "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out", we thought of them as Alumni? Knowledge centres? Friends? (Not you, John Terry, you're still a numpty).

After all, aren't they walking out with a head full of our IP, customer database and process maps, not to mention their honest, no-holds-barred insight into our business? The stuff that other employees may not want to share because they're too scared or too astute to? The stuff that if we listened, might prove priceless? Or might save us a hefty consultant's fee some stage down the line. They may be angry, they may be upset, they may not even like us very much but that's no reason to write them off as a twonk and assume they have nothing to teach us. We might survive, but will we have learned anything?

And what about this? Ex-employees are to your EVP what your customers are to your brand. Are yours advocates? What would they say about you? Would they back up the blurb in the glossy recruitment brochure? 

A wise ex colleague of mine once told me that our job is to help everyone who leaves the business feel as warmly about us as they did when they joined. Ambitious? Maybe. But given the current climate and the increasing view that HR is becoming a "Downsizing Envoy" hadn't we better help the business learn a new tune and a little diplomacy when it comes to leavers? Hadn't we better get good at this grown-up break up stuff?



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