This
incident happened few years back when I was working
in MNC. I was gearing up for a meeting at 10:30 am on Monday morning with
a Architect accompanied by a experienced
lighting design person who had spent more than 6 yrs with the company
and had put up his papers recently.I knew the employee was fairly engaged
with his work, liked by his peers and was taking active participation in most
of the cross functional teams across his area of work. So what went wrong?
During
our journey to the Architects office which
was on the other
part of the
city I had ample
time to discuss
and figure out the trigger of his
exit and also to explore the options of retaining him by changing the location
or his
job profile if needed.
What
stumped me while having the conversation with him was: he said: “you are the
first person who is genuinely interested in me and talking about staying back”.
After further quizzing him I learnt that his immediate boss knee jerk reaction
was “now that you have planned to go, go after some time and not immediately”
as it will hamper his ongoing project work. Lighting team dept head reacted by saying “since the entire
year you did so and so work I can’t give you more than certain rating during EMS
which will translate into 12%
increment”. His immediate Boss didn’t have the courage and cheek to go and
influence the dept head about retaining the employee nor the dept head bothered
to check out the trigger for his exit. He fairly assumed it would be money and
started talking the language of EMS 12%
rise and so forth.
However,
what left me in greater thoughts was about the emotional and psychological
contract that the employee had towards his work, supervisor, team and company
which no longer was the same post he put his papers and saw the reaction from
his Boss and also his dept head. I also
found out he had
lots to give back to
our company in
terms of feed
back if Exit
interview was to be
arranged , but surprisingly non
of my team
mates or his
boss nor his Department
head was interested in
hearing his feed back!!
Could the
similar situation be handled in a different way? The answer is Yes. Maybe the
employee may have still left us and gone but he would have continued to be our
brand ambassador despite not working with us
and also his rich experience in
being with us
for 5 plus years
would have benefited
if at all we
could have arranged a
exit interview , , but
alas the opportunity was
missed and in
few days he left
our organisation and
recently when I met
him he was
heading a design team in big
MNC and doing
really well .
How can one aim for that sort of engagement
when your ex employees talk highly about you while they are no longer working
in the same organization? The answer is simple and not rocket science – make
their stay including the exit as memorable as possible and treat them with
humane approach as they were welcomed in the system on the first day of
joining. Create enough memorable memories and experience to cherish so that the
employee continues to give his best productive performance even on the last day
of his work!
“Always treat
your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” – Stephen R. Covey
Even during
Ramayana and Mahabaharatha
there was a sort
of exit interview
which was useful
for to be crowned
kings Lord Rama and Yudistra
In
fact During death bed of Ravana
Lord Rama took advise
from Ravana the learned King
how to conduct
as successful King
so was Yudistria under
instruction of Krishna sought the
advise of Bheeshma
pittamaha which is well
documented in bheeshma
parva .This is exactly
what
we call as
knowledge sharing ..
This is
what Devadatt pattnaik says ......
. “In triumph, it is
easy to claim the material possessions of the defeated – his cows, his gold,
his slaves, his kingdom, his palace. But it is not easy to claim his knowledge.
When he dies, his knowledge and all his experience goes with him. Knowledge
does not outlive death.
Similarally. Every day, people leave
organizations, taking their knowledge with them, knowledge which they probably
acquired because they are part of the organization. They take with them
knowledge of clients, markets, business processes, tricks of the trade. These
may not be confidential information or patented information, but information
that does give an organization that competitive edge.”
The days
are gone when employees used to work for single organizations for the rest of
their lives. Can we do something genuinely on retaining good talent?
“When people
are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally
invested, they want to contribute.”
